Prague and Beyond: Jews in the Bohemian Lands 9780812299595

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Prague and Beyond

JEWISH CULTURE AND CONTEXTS Published in association with the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies of the University of Pennsylvania Series Editors: Shaul Magid, Francesca Trivellato, Steven Weitzman A complete list of books in the series is available from the publisher.

PRAGUE AND BEYOND Jews in the Bohemian Lands

Edited by

Kateřina Čapková and Hillel J. Kieval

universit y of pennsylvania press phil adelphia

Copyright © 2021 University of Pennsylvania Press All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher. Published by University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112 www.upenn.edu/pennpress Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN 978-0-8122-5311-5

C ontents

Acknowledgments Introduction

Kateřina Čapková and Hillel J. Kieval

Chapter 1. The Jews of the Bohemian Lands in Early Modern Times

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22

Verena Kasper-Marienberg and Joshua Teplitsky

Chapter 2. Absolutism and Control: Jews in the Bohemian Lands in the Eighteenth Century

61

Michael L. Miller

Chapter 3. Unequal Mobility: Jews, State, and Society in an Era of Contradictions, 1790–1860

85

Hillel J. Kieval

Chapter 4. Contested Equality: Jews in the Bohemian Lands, 1861–1917

120

Michal Frankl, Martina Niedhammer, and Ines Koeltzsch

Chapter 5. Becoming Czechoslovaks: Jews in the Bohemian Lands, 1917–38

157

Ines Koeltzsch, Michal Frankl, and Martina Niedhammer

Chapter 6. The Holocaust in Bohemia and Moravia

196

Benjamin Frommer

Chapter 7. Periphery and Center: Jews in the Bohemian Lands from 1945 to the Present Kateřina Čapková

235

vi

Contents

Appendix. The Demographic Development of Jewish Settlement in Selected Communities in the Bohemian Lands

280

Helena Klímová and Lenka Matušíková

Notes

313

Selected Bibliography

355

List of Contributors

363

Index

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Ac k now l e d g ments

This volume is the product of at least six years of planning, discussion, research, and writing. The final push was provided by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, whose funding (20.15.0.075GE) to the Institute of Contemporary History of the Czech Academy of Sciences enabled the convening of two workshops in Prague in the summers of 2016 and 2017 and covered translation costs of the English original into Czech. A key participant in the 2016 workshop was Rachel Greenblatt. We would like to express our deep gratitude for all the important input Greenblatt gave to the project in its initial stages. Our appreciation also goes out to the Central European University in Budapest and Michael L. Miller, who hosted the third and final workshop in December 2017 thanks to funding from the Rothschild Foundation Hanadiv Europe. The writing and publication of Prague and Beyond were also made possible by several research grants provided to individual authors and editors. We would like to acknowledge the Czech Science Foundation (GA ČR, grant no. 16-01775Y) for supporting Kateřina Čapková’s research and editorial work; Washington University in St. Louis for providing support for research and travel for Hillel Kieval; Masaryk Institute and Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences for supporting the research of Ines Koeltzsch, Michal Frankl, and also Benjamin Frommer during his stay in Prague in autumn 2017; and the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies, where Frankl and Koeltzsch have been fellows in the past years. We are also grateful for the support provided by Strategy AV21, the Czech Academy of Sciences, Global Conflicts and Local Interactions, for funding most of the translation into Hebrew and some additional costs related to finalizing the manuscript. We would also like to thank Zuzana Justman and Eva Derman for their private donations to this project given through the Society for the History of Czechoslovak Jews. We appreciate not only their personal support but also our partnership with this important New York–based organization. The German version of our volume was funded by the Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien (BKM) and shepherded by Martina Niedhammer from Collegium Carolinum in Munich. The German manuscript

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Acknowledgments

profited enormously from Martina’s expertise and labors. It is an honor to have our volume appear in the book series of Collegium Carolinum, an institution that not only is at the center of research on Czech and Slovak history in Germany but has notably contributed to research on history of Jews in this region through several conferences and key publications. Special thanks go also to Derek Paton, who has painstakingly proofread the original English version of our manuscript and contributed to its linguistic homogeneity and clarification. His language-editing abilities were uniquely suited to this project: A gifted word stylist and relentless copy editor, Derek also has deep knowledge of Czech and German languages and Czech and Jewish history. We would also like to express our gratitude to the editors from the University of Pennsylvania Press for their impressive work on the manuscript—especially to Noreen O’Connor-Abel and Mindy Brown, and also to David Luljak for his help with the index. We were also very fortunate that we could entrust the translations into Hebrew and Czech to the top translators and specialists in the field. We are indebted to Yael Rosenman for her excellent translation into Hebrew and to Tamara Vosecká and Olga Sixtová for their special help with the Czech version. The demographic study, added to this volume and written by Helena Klímová and Lenka Matušíková in Czech, has been translated into German by Kristina Kallert and into English by Barbara Day. We are also thankful to Dana Léw, an IT specialist, for preparing the maps that open each chapter. Finally, we would like to thank those institutions and individuals who have generously provided the rights for publication of images from their collections. We are grateful to the Jewish Museum in Prague (www.jewishmuseum.cz) for granting permission to use several precious pictures and photographs from the collections of the museum free of charge. We greatly appreciate this generosity and partnership. Special thanks also go to Harry Farkaš, Malvina Hoffmann Z″L and Daniel Adler, Alice Lutwak, the Masaryk Institute and Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences, the organization Respekt a tolerance, the USHMM, and the State District Archive in Chomutov for providing us with the permission to publish their photographs without any payment due.

No t e on Pl ace Na m e s In works about Central Europe, local place names can present problems since they can exist in several forms—in case of the Bohemian Lands, in German and in Czech. Except for the names of towns with an established English version (like Prague, Pilsen, and Carlsbad) we are mentioning both versions with the first use

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in the chapter and only one form thereafter. Since we do not prefer one national narrative over another, and also in respect to the different preferences in place names during the centuries, in Chapters 1–4 the German place names are given preference, in Chapters 5–7 the Czech. This is reflected also in the maps which precede each chapter. Only in the map at the front of Chapter 6 do we distinguish between places in Sudetenland which were annexed to the German Reich during World War II, and their names are therefore written in German. For the places in the Protectorate Bohemia and Moravia we have consciously chosen their Czech names. In the demographic supplement, where the history of selected Jewish communities is described in more detail, the authors have chosen to use the Czech names which one may also find on today’s map of the Czech Republic. In case of uncertainty, for equivalents of place names, consult the index.

Introduction Kateřina Čapková and Hillel J. Kieval

For the millions of foreigners who visit Prague each year, the city’s magnificent synagogues and Old Jewish Cemetery are prime draws and destinations. Beyond the capital, more intrepid travelers encounter physical evidence of once-vibrant Jewish communities in towns and villages throughout today’s Czech Republic. When those tourists and students, however, seek to learn more about the people who once prayed and mourned, haggled and struggled, lived and died at those sites, they find that, surprisingly, there exists no comprehensive history of the region’s Jews. Traditional surveys of the political, economic, and social development of the Bohemian Lands, moreover, treat its Jewish communities— and Jewish life—as an afterthought, tangential to the main historical narrative. This absence is all the more remarkable because, over the past two decades, scholars have published a number of ground-breaking monographs on specific aspects of the region’s Jewish history. The authors of a number of those innovative works have been working together to complete the historiographical circle, to write a comprehensive history of the Jews of the Bohemian Lands that synthesizes and revises existing scholarship. They have produced a volume of connected and integrated chapters whose goal is to narrate and analyze the Jewish experience in the Bohemian Lands as an integral and inseparable part of the development of Central Europe and its peoples from the sixteenth century to the present day. Prague and Beyond seeks to create a different kind of historical survey, one that is analytical and interpretive as well as descriptive, that searches out social and cultural patterns distinctive to the Bohemian Lands without losing sight of the ways in which Jewish experience cut across political and territorial boundaries. As the book’s title suggests, its authors take pains not to focus exclusively— or even primarily—on Prague, which, for reasons of its size and cultural prestige, has tended to command the attention of scholars to such an extent as to stand in for every thing there is to know about Jewish life between Teplice (Teplitz) and Mikulov (Nikolsburg). Prague and Beyond pays close attention to patterns

Introduction Kateřina Čapková and Hillel J. Kieval

For the millions of foreigners who visit Prague each year, the city’s magnificent synagogues and Old Jewish Cemetery are prime draws and destinations. Beyond the capital, more intrepid travelers encounter physical evidence of once-vibrant Jewish communities in towns and villages throughout today’s Czech Republic. When those tourists and students, however, seek to learn more about the people who once prayed and mourned, haggled and struggled, lived and died at those sites, they find that, surprisingly, there exists no comprehensive history of the region’s Jews. Traditional surveys of the political, economic, and social development of the Bohemian Lands, moreover, treat its Jewish communities— and Jewish life—as an afterthought, tangential to the main historical narrative. This absence is all the more remarkable because, over the past two decades, scholars have published a number of ground-breaking monographs on specific aspects of the region’s Jewish history. The authors of a number of those innovative works have been working together to complete the historiographical circle, to write a comprehensive history of the Jews of the Bohemian Lands that synthesizes and revises existing scholarship. They have produced a volume of connected and integrated chapters whose goal is to narrate and analyze the Jewish experience in the Bohemian Lands as an integral and inseparable part of the development of Central Europe and its peoples from the sixteenth century to the present day. Prague and Beyond seeks to create a different kind of historical survey, one that is analytical and interpretive as well as descriptive, that searches out social and cultural patterns distinctive to the Bohemian Lands without losing sight of the ways in which Jewish experience cut across political and territorial boundaries. As the book’s title suggests, its authors take pains not to focus exclusively— or even primarily—on Prague, which, for reasons of its size and cultural prestige, has tended to command the attention of scholars to such an extent as to stand in for every thing there is to know about Jewish life between Teplice (Teplitz) and Mikulov (Nikolsburg). Prague and Beyond pays close attention to patterns

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Kateřina Čapková and Hillel J. Kieval

of Jewish life (often quite distinctive) in Moravia and Austrian Silesia as well as Bohemia. Its authors highlight the lives of individual Jews as a point of entry into wider social structures and group behav ior. They address everyday life and the experiences of everyday Jews as well as high culture and elites; of women and girls as well as men and boys; of small towns and villages as well as urban centers; of exceptions to the rule as well as general patterns. Another way Prague and Beyond differs from conventional historical surveys is in its use of primary sources to produce its narrative. These sources include travel accounts, memoirs, government documents, Jewish communal legislation (takkanot), personal archives, letters, rabbinic responsa, women’s prayer books, newspaper accounts, and polemical literature. Introducing primary source material into our narrative informs the reader of the numerous products of Jewish experience in the Bohemian Lands and invites the reader to engage with these cultural products. Finally, this approach allows each chapter to put forth its own original arguments and interpretation, which we shall endeavor to highlight in what follows. We strove to write Prague and Beyond in a narrative style that incorporates various analytical perspectives, ranging from migration and mobility to religious life and education, from social networks to spatial configurations, and from gender and family to memory and commemorative practices. The hope is not only to address neglected areas of study but to capture more fully the diversity and multivalence of life in these lands.

Why “Bohemian Lands”? In this book we use the term “Bohemian Lands” to refer to that part of Central Europe which since 1993 has comprised the Czech Republic: a region made up of Bohemia (with Prague/Prag/Praha as the largest city), Moravia (with Brno/ Brünn as the main urban center), and a part of Silesia (with Opava/Troppau). “Bohemian Lands” is also a historical term, which gained a new political connotation in the second half of the nineteenth century as a conceptual tool defining the legal and political aspirations of the Czech national movement. This term refers to the late medieval and early modern composite monarchy, with the kingdom of Bohemia as a core and a cluster of adjacent and greatly self-sufficient provinces attached to it. This fragmented political structure of lands of the Bohemian Crown (Corona regni Bohemiae in Latin; Länder der böhmischen Krone in German) was defined for the first time in 1348 by King Charles IV of Luxembourg, who drew on the legacy of the extinct Přemyslid dynasty and its expansionist efforts. In its extent, which survived the fifteenthcentury Hussite wars, this composite monarchy included Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, Upper Lusatia (Oberlausitz/Horní Lužice), Lower Lusatia (Niederlausitz/

Introduction

3

Dolní Lužice), a handful of smaller autonomous territories, such as the region around Cheb (Egerland/Chebsko), and a patchwork of fiefs in the Holy Roman Empire.1 The borders of Bohemia and Moravia have been remarkably stable over the centuries. The major change in the shape of the Bohemian Lands occurred during the two Silesian Wars (1740–1745), after which only a small part of historical Silesia—concurrently named Austrian Silesia, later redubbed Czech, or even Czechoslovak Silesia—remained attached to the Bohemian Crown. During the twentieth century, disputes repeatedly erupted in Silesia’s Těšín region (Teschener Schlesien/Těšínsko) between Poland and Czechoslova kia over where the border between Czechoslova kia and Poland should lie. For the vast majority of their history, the present-day Bohemian Lands have existed within larger political units—with the only exception of the short period between 1993, when Czechoslovakia split into two separate states, and 2004, when the Czech Republic (like Slovakia) entered the European Union. In the late middle ages, Bohemia and Moravia formed parts of various dynastic agglomerations of the Luxembourgs, Jagiellonians, and Habsburgs, and were in varying degrees linked to the Holy Roman Empire. When Archduke Ferdinand I was elected king of Bohemia in 1526, the Bohemian composite monarchy entered the dynastical union with the Austrian and Hungarian lands which soon developed into a firmer political system.2 The Bohemian Lands, as well as Hungary, remained part of the Habsburg monarchy up to the end of World War I. Following almost three and a half centuries of asymmetrical development in the Habsburg Lands, the Compromise (Ausgleich) of 1867 split the monarchy into Austrian (Cisleithania/Předlitavsko) and Hungarian (Transleithania/ Zalitavsko) parts. The constitutions of 1867 and 1868 also brought nearly full political emancipation to Jews in the monarchy. The remaining lands of the Bohemian Crown (Kingdom of Bohemia, Margraviate of Moravia, and Austrian Silesia) formed a major part of Cisleithania, together with the Austrian hereditary lands, Galicia (annexed at the end of the eighteenth century during the Partitions of Poland), and Venetian Dalmatia. Of these territories, the Bohemian Lands may well have enjoyed the most developed industry and economy. The decades that stretched from 1867 to 1914 were buffeted by various social and political conflicts, among which linguistic and national struggles were particularly salient.3 In order to establish critical distance from the Czech/German national controversies of the period, we have made a conscious choice not to use the term the “Czech Lands” to refer to this part of Europe, though it does have some currency in recent historical scholarship. Part of the confusion is caused also by the fact that the Czech language does not distinguish between Czech

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and Bohemian (in contrast to German, English, or Latin) and has only one term for both: český. When the borders of the newly established states were carved out of the territory of the former Habsburg monarchy at Versailles, the case of Czechoslovakia appeared to pit one principle against another. Officially the right of nations (which were defined mostly in linguistic terms) to have self-determination in the form of independent states dominated public debates and played an important role in the argumentation of Czech and Slovak politicians for an independent Czechoslovak state. The Allies also showed respect for historical political borders and took natural frontiers, logistics, and transportation into account as well.4 It is this combination of potentially irreconcilable principles that explains in part how the historical borders of the Bohemian Lands came to be acknowledged as the western borders of Czechoslova kia, including the predominantly German borderlands, resulting in a “Czechoslovak” state that included more than three million German-speaking inhabitants. In the case of Slovakia, the use of the river Danube for part of the border was understood as a natu ral choice, even though the number of Hungarian-speaking people in Czechoslovakia grew with this decision. The southern border of Carpathian Ruthenia, which became part of the interwar Czechoslova kia, was set by the presence of a railway line. Throughout the interwar period, a tension existed between the nationalist definition of Czechoslovakia as a state of primarily Czechoslovaks—a newly constructed nation—on the one hand, and the ideal of a liberal democracy made up of people from different nationalities who might feel secure and well-integrated into the society, on the other.5 After 1933, when the Nazis seized power in neighboring Germany, the impact of an other wise minor movement among Czechoslovak Germans who were in favor of the annexation to Germany of the predominantly German border regions began to grow. The Munich Agreement of September 29, 1938, signed by Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister, Édouard Daladier, the French premier, Benito Mussolini, the Italian prime minister, and Hitler, ordered the Czechoslovak government to cede the “SudetenGerman” border regions to the German Reich. In October, Poland forced Czechoslova kia to give up a region around Teschen (Těšín), and in November large parts of southern and eastern Slovakia and all of Subcarpathian Ruthenia were annexed by Hungary. The period between October 1938 and May 1945, therefore, was the only time in the history of the Bohemian Lands when the borders of state units cut across Bohemia and Moravia. Large Jewish communities in the border regions fell to the newly established Reichsgau Sudetenland and to neighboring regions in German-annexed Austria. The vast majority of the Jewish population in these

Introduction

5

regions, together with many non-Jewish Czech as well as German-speaking opponents of Nazism, tried to flee to the Czecho-Slovak interior. With the end of World War II, another change came to the shape of Czechoslova kia. In 1945 the Soviet Union decided to annex Subcarpathian Ruthenia (since 1945 called Transcarpathian Ukraine) to the Ukrainian Soviet Republic. This was precisely the territory that, in the interwar period, contained close to a third of the total Jewish population of the country, home to numerous Jewish communities in cities, shtetls, and villages. Several thousand local Jewish survivors decided to move to the Bohemian Lands after the war, thereby radically changing the linguistic, religious, and social structure of the Jewish population there. In 1969 Czechoslova kia became a federal state of Czech and Slovak Republics. Negotiations related to the federation started during the Prague Spring and were accelerated after the occupation of the Warsaw Pact’s armies in August 1968, in the face of anticipated Soviet opposition. In 1970 additional legislation changed dramatically the balance of the previous federal law, in favor of centralization and the dominance of the Czech Republic.6 After the fall of communism in November 1989, the tensions over Czech and Slovak political representation grew. On January  1, 1993, the two republics became independent state units, and both joined the European Union in 2004.

Works That Preceded Ours: The State of the Field in Modern Times The middle years of the nineteenth century, as Monika Báar notes in her analysis, marked a time when, in much of East Central Europe, the master narratives of local nations were written by historians to anchor the political demands of the nation’s elite. Jews, by and large, were not understood to be an integral part of these stories but were viewed as foreign to them.7 This observation holds true for the case of the Bohemian Lands as well, where František Palacký—the father of modern Czech historiography—outlined the history of the region as an eternal struggle between Czechs and Germans in which Jews were seldom mentioned. Jews, moreover, were clearly understood to be a group of people who did not belong to either of these national bodies.8 The few works that did appear during this period concerning the history of the Jews in the Bohemian Lands were written as a story apart, interesting precisely for being so different from the Christian experience.9 At the turn of the twentieth century Jewish scholars joined in the production of local Jewish histories. These surveys, written by such people as Markus Hirsch Friedländer, Adolf Stein, and Gottlieb Bondy (joined in his work by the

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non-Jewish historian Franz Dworský), shared a common approach.10 They relied on official state documents and Christian chronicles as the basic sources of information. Consequently, Jewish history in these works amounted to the history of state policies toward Jews, though the surveys written by Jewish scholars also managed to list the leading rabbis of the region and their achievements.11 It was not until the interwar period that a critical, archival-based historiography of Jewish life in the Bohemian Lands fully emerged, research made possible in part through the establishment of specialized journals. In 1928 the Czechoslovak lodge of B’nai B’rith established the Society for the History of Czechoslovak Jews and proceeded to provide generous financial support to an academic journal of heretofore unmatched excellence: the Jahrbuch der Gesellschaft für Geschichte der Juden in der Čechoslovakischen Republik (published simultaneously in Czech as Ročenka Společnosti pro dějiny Židů v Československé republice), which appeared between 1929 and 1938. Samuel Steinherz (1857– 1942), professor of history at the German University in Prague and a respected member of the B’nai B’rith, served as its editor-in-chief.12 The Vienna-born publisher and editor Hugo Gold (1895–1974) produced a second journal devoted to Jewish history from the Moravian capital of Brno (Brünn) entitled Zeitschrift für die Geschichte der Juden in der Tschechoslowakei beginning in 1930. Acutely aware of the dramatic changes that had taken place in Jewish life in the Bohemian Lands in his own times, Gold also observed with more than a touch of nostalgia the decline and disappearance of numerous Jewish communities in small towns and villages—the result of urbanization and Jewish migration. As he explained in the introduction to a separate project of his to collect photos and documentation, he acted out of the “sense that our village communities would totally disappear in short time due to depopulation and dissolution and that we have to do every thing we can in this last minute, in order to save at least in word and picture all the Jewish heritage and to preserve it for our descendants.”13 The decline of rural Jewish communities proved to be remarkably quick. In many cases Gold could not even find a Jew in a locality where there had been an active Jewish community before 1848. Thus the book project ended up as a unique example of cooperation between Jewish and nonJewish authors, between scholars and local devotees.14 Gold managed to escape to Palestine before the war and established the publishing house Olamenu in Tel Aviv; Steinherz died in the Theresienstadt ghetto. In 1938, the same year both Gold and Steinherz were forced to stop publishing their journals, Guido Kisch (1889–1985), a lawyer and specialist in medieval studies, started another journal, Historia Judaica, in both German and English— published first in Europe and since 1939 in the United States.15 Kisch understood himself to be one of the few people who could preserve and continue this

Introduction

7

Central European tradition of history-writing in American exile. He became a founding member of the Society for the History of Czechoslovak Jews, established in New York in 1961, an organization that was conceived as a successor to the interwar society, with a minor, but significant, change in title.16 In contrast to “Jews in Czechoslova kia” (or, more precisely, the Czechoslovak Republic), the focus turned to “Czechoslovak Jews,” regardless of the territory in which they lived. B’nai B’rith, this time the Joseph Popper Lodge, which was established by Jewish refugees from Czechoslova kia, again played a crucial role as the major donor and supporter of the society. The initiative for establishment of the society came from Kurt Wehle, who had been working as the secretary of the Council of the Jewish Communities in Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia until the communist coup in February 1948. Research on Jewish history continued, though under highly restricted conditions, in Czechoslova kia under communist rule. In 1965 Václav Benda, director of the State Jewish Museum in Prague, founded Judaica Bohemiae, an academic journal aimed at readership abroad. The vast majority of its articles that were devoted to history analyzed the situation of Jews in the medieval and early modern periods—certainly the result of a decision not to deal with controversial topics from modern Jewish history, such as the Zionist movement, a taboo subject under communism. One can also understand this development as a continuation of the dominant interest in the late medieval and early modern periods, which we could observe in the historical journals of the interwar period. Several new surveys of Jewish history in the Bohemian Lands appeared during the years 1968 to 1990 in the United States, Germany, and Czechoslova kia. Those works that were published in German and in English were written from the perspective that the history of the Jews in the Bohemian Lands was by now a closed chapter, a finished story with a definite ending; the purpose of the Czechlanguage studies, in contrast, seems to have been to bring Jewish history—and Jewish presence—back into the consciousness of the Czech public. The major American contribution was the three-volume compendium The Jews of Czechoslovakia, which stands as a major achievement of the Society for the History of Czechoslovak Jews in New York, and it continues to serve as a key reference work for English-language readers.17 The contributors to these volumes were mostly Czechoslovak Jewish émigrés who had escaped either the Nazi or the communist regime. The authors did not have access to historical archives in contemporary Czechoslova kia; most of the individual contributions were based on printed sources from the early twentieth century, personal experience, and privately held collections. The work has been of enormous value to scholars, nevertheless, in part because of its personal approach, touched as it was

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by a certain nostalgia for the era prior to World War II. Moreover, because some of the authors themselves were important actors in the events described in their texts, The Jews of Czechoslovakia provides a remarkable trove of first-person testimonies by some of the major Jewish actors in interwar Czechoslova kia. Two very different volumes offer readers of German an overview of the history of Jews in the Bohemian Lands from the second half of the eighteenth century down to the middle of the twentieth. Rudolf M. Wlaschek’s Juden in Böhmen relies heavily (except for the period of World War II) on the research of previous scholars; what he offers is a largely fact-based survey with an explicit focus on state policies toward Jews. At the time of the book’s appearance, its final chapter, devoted to Czech-Jewish culture in Israel, was unprecedented.18 Wilma Iggers’s unique volume of documents relating to the history of Jews in the Bohemian Lands presents readers with sources that go beyond political narrative and the relationship of Jews to the state. She introduces the reader to valuable ego-documents (memoirs, diaries, correspondence), some published for the first time, thereby offering insight into the complex social networks that existed both within and outside the Jewish community, into local religious customs and language usage in different social contexts. Iggers includes not only documents from Prague and the larger Jewish communities in the Bohemian Lands, but also ones relating to Jewish life in small towns and villages. She shows concern for the specific situations and experiences of Jewish women and is sensitive to the importance of myth and legend in collective identity.19 Readers of Czech mostly rely on the survey Historie Židů v Čechách a na Moravě (History of Jews in Bohemia and Moravia) by Tomáš Pěkný (1943–2013), who was a leading Czech journalist and dissident, one of the founders of the liberal journal Respekt, and editor-in-chief of Roš Chodeš, the journal of the Jewish communities in the Czech and Slovak Republics. Pěkný collected material for his book in the 1980s, and its first version was published as one of the last volumes of the dissident book series Alef in 1990.20 It appeared in an expanded version in 1993 and again in 2001.21 This book played an impor tant role in the early post-communist period by providing the Czech public with basic information about Jewish history and culture. Based on secondary literature, mostly from the pre-communist period, it offers an overview of the history of Jews in the Bohemian Lands, but the chronological narrative ends with the emancipation of 1867. The book then shifts focus to explore a number of discrete topics in the fields of religion, literature, and economic history. In the last three decades, scholars from Eu rope, the United States, and Israel have taken part in what might be seen as a rejuvenation of the field of Jewish history in the Bohemian Lands, producing new and original research,

Introduction

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and challenging, in the process, some of the dominant theses of earlier writing. This trend can be said to have begun with the publication in 1988 of Hillel J. Kieval’s The Making of Czech Jewry, which marked an important departure in the writing of modern Jewish history in this region.22 It was soon followed by a host of other new and original contributions. What distinguishes these new publications, in part, is their reliance on primary sources produced by Jews, sources that often correct or refute conventional wisdoms and prejudices based on documents of state administration only, and which show the remarkable diversity of Jewish communities, culture, and society. The authors are less interested than earlier historians in political history, focusing instead on social networks, daily life experiences, material culture, oral history and memory, and gender issues. These works, moreover, tend not to separate Jewish experience from that of the surrounding population. They focus on entanglement and connection—between Jews and non-Jews; between Jews of the region and those in other countries and continents; and on the entanglements of conflicts across religious and ethnic communities. In Prague and Beyond a number of these scholars have joined together to present new findings and perspectives in a comprehensive history. Isolated research projects are in this way bound together and reveal long-term tendencies as well as turning points and radical changes.23

Major Themes and Arguments In Chapter 1 (“The Jews of the Bohemian Lands in Early Modern Times”), written by Verena Kasper-Marienberg and Joshua Teplitsky, the authors make the point that any history of Jewish life in the Bohemian Lands must take place along three intersecting axes: within the unequal legal and demographic spaces of Bohemia, Moravia, and Prague; between the structures of Jewish life and its wider non-Jewish, often Christian, local ambiences; and across the features of Jewish life that were at once shared with Jews across Europe and at the same time regionally par ticu lar to the Jews of the Bohemian Lands. Their story is one of movement, pattern, mobility, and distinctiveness (social, regional, cultural, and religious). The authors show the ways in which patterns of settlement and communal organization in much of the Bohemian Lands resembled those of the western parts of the Holy Roman Empire, while in Moravia these patterns were closer to those of Poland-Lithuania. To a large extent, international boundaries separating Jewish communities were quite porous, with many Jewish men moving in and out of the Bohemian Lands for purposes of study and trade, and Jewish women moving usually in connection to domestic employment and

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marriage. Jewish refugees of both sexes fled from violence in Poland-Lithuania in the mid-seventeenth century, settling, for greater or lesser periods of time, in the Bohemian Lands and influencing the cultural complexion of their new homes there. With the expulsion of Jews from most royally chartered cities and towns in Bohemia in the sixteenth century—with the exception of the imperial city of Prague—many Jews found refuge in small villages in the countryside under the protection of noble lords, while a very large concentration of Jews lived in Prague, which for a period of time also served as the imperial capital. In Moravia, in contrast, where most urban expulsions occurred in the fifteenth century, Jews tended to live in medium-sized market towns that were the private domains of noble families. In both regions, Jews forged close political alliances with the nobility; in Prague, a complex dynamic played out, pitting burgher elites against both imperial and noble interests. Jewish cultural production in this period reflected the larger dichotomy between social and religious distinctiveness, on the one hand, and shared experience, the realities of migration, and economic interaction, on the other. Talmudic glosses produced in the thirteenth century introduced to the broad Jewish readership numerous Slavic expressions; Prague’s David Gans visited the astronomical laboratories of Christian scientists at the turn of the seventeenth century; and popular memory (both Jewish and Christian) has preserved stories of contacts between Rabbi Judah Loew (Maharal) and the court of Rudolf II. The very act of disseminating culture—through the medium of print—was similarly forged by collaborative energies between Jews and Christians. Exchanges across confessional lines ensued in markets and fairs, town squares, inns and taverns, and private homes, even as Jews administered distinct houses of prayer, courts, and legislatures. Jews in the Bohemian Lands in the early modern period evinced signs of a strongly held regional identity and attachment to place. This identity was distinct from that of other regional Jewish cultures, neither Ashkenaz (the German lands) nor Polin (the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth). The Jews of “the lands between” forged their own particular sense of self. Chapter 2 (“Absolutism and Control: Jews in the Bohemian Lands in the Eighteenth Century”), written by Michael L. Miller, opens with the emergence of the Habsburg monarchy from the crisis of the Thirty Years’ War and the efforts of the Habsburg monarchs to exert control over the size and distribution of the growing Jewish population in the Bohemian Lands. A major, discriminatory landmark of this period took the form of the so-called Familiants Laws (Familiantengesetze)—which remained in force in the Bohemian Lands from 1726 to 1848. Their purpose, only partially achieved, was to cap the size of the Jewish population and allow no further growth. These were followed one year

Introduction

11

later by the Separation Laws of 1727, which ordered residential segregation in clearly demarcated Jewish residential quarters, or “ghettos.” The demarcation of a bounded space in which Jews were to live, whether in Moravian towns or in the Bohemian capital, reflected a widespread perception (though not held by all, particularly not by noble lords) that Jews constituted a threat that needed to be curbed or contained. Only in the reign of Maria Theresa, however, were Jews banished, at least for a short period of time, from part of the Bohemian Lands. Maria Theresa’s son Joseph II took a very different approach, aiming instead to transform his Jewish subjects into “useful” and “productive” subjects, in part by breaking down the social and occupational barriers that separated Jews from the surrounding Christian population. His Edicts of Toleration (dating from 1781 to 1789) and other laws mandating educational, cultural, and economic reform have sometimes been viewed as harbingers of Jewish emancipation in Central Europe. This may be too optimistic a view, but they clearly signaled a major policy shift on the part of the state. Now—while never fully abandoning earlier fears and suspicions—the state deliberately intervened in the cultural, educational, and economic affairs of the semi-autonomous Jewish community, not only to control its size and growth but also to encourage various reforms that might lead to the production of subjects deemed to be “useful” to the state. The eighteenth century thus witnessed the encroachment of the state upon the lives of its Jewish population in the Bohemian Lands from several different angles: efforts at demographic and spatial control; physical expulsion (from Prague between 1745 and 1748); but also (under Joseph II and Leopold II) significant measures designed to facilitate the integration of Jews into Bohemian, Moravian, and Silesian society through acculturation. It was a century, then, marked both by counter-reformation policies of control and repression and by “enlightened” absolutist interventions into Jewish social, cultural, and educational patterns. Jewish society in the Bohemian Lands was also buffeted by opposing forces within it. Rabbinic culture and authority may have reached its apogee during the Prague career of Ezekiel Landau (1755–1793)—during which time he served as chief rabbi and head of Prague’s yeshiva and rabbinic court, and enjoyed unchallenged legal and spiritual authority throughout much of Central Europe—but these decades were not free of controversy and communal strife. Traditional Jewish culture and social hierarchies were challenged from within from several directions: the repercussions of the Sabbatian messianic movement (both moderate and radical); Polish Hasidism; signs of a growing distance of urban Jews from traditional Jewish practice; and, perhaps most significant, the program of the Jewish Enlightenment, or Haskalah. Chapter 3 (“Unequal Mobility: Jews, State, and Society in an Era of Contradictions, 1790–1860”), written by Hillel J. Kieval, tells a story of ongoing

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social, cultural, and economic change which takes place, however, largely in the absence of encouragement from the state. As its title suggests, it is a tale of contradictions: between democratic revolution and political conservatism; traditional religious culture and steady secularization; disinterest on the part of the state in Jewish affairs, punctuated by moments of concern; and increasing social integration and mobility in the absence of formal, political equality. Its overarching argument is that it is only in the nineteenth century, with its combination of Jewish and state schools, and carried along by shopkeepers, master craftsmen, mothers, fathers, itinerant tutors, and incipient industrialists, that identification with the language, high culture, and civic values of the imperial state would expand to incorporate virtually all of the Jewish population. These social and cultural trends developed according to a timetable and at a pace that seemed at times immune to the politics of revolution and reaction that rattled state and society in the Bohemian Lands. Well before the formal emancipation of 1867, the state, the Jewish community, the schools, and the economy will have combined to produce modern Jewish subjects—fluent in the languages and high culture of the state, attuned to the political concerns of their neighbors, and skilled at navigating avenues to social mobility and advancement. The seven decades that stretched from 1790 to 1860 were undoubtedly ones marked by hesitancy and indecision on the part of Habsburg, Bohemian, and Moravian officials—uncertain about what the political status of Jews ought to be, what rights they should possess, and what their cultural profile might look like. The same, however, cannot be said of Jewish society itself. The Jewish communities of Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia might continue to be divided between religious traditionalists and reformists of various stripes (including those who rejected rabbinic authority altogether), but the basic patterns of cultural integration had been put in place. These were not going to be reversed, though they would undergo shifts in emphasis and direction. Crucially for the women and men whose mental universes had been altered by the profound cultural and educational transformations of the period, their expectations for social mobility—for greater integration into Bohemian, Moravian, and Silesian society—also grew. Ultimately, the Revolutions of 1848 produced uneven results for Jews in the Bohemian Lands. The constitutional document that was being considered by the revolutionary parliament in April would have established freedom of religion and conscience, the rights of Jews to acquire property and to practice any trade or occupation, and full equality under the law. The imposed Constitution of 1849, meanwhile, while much more reserved regarding Jewish rights, nevertheless proclaimed the equality of Jews and Christians in matters of public and private law. And although the constitution was revoked in Decem-

Introduction

13

ber 1851, the principles of the free practice of religion and equality under the law (with some exceptions) appear to have been maintained in practice, with no new restrictions being placed on Jews. When Jews in the Bohemian Lands were officially accorded the status of full citizenship in 1867, together with the rest of the Jews in Austria-Hungary a year later, they were more than prepared to assume the new status. Chapter 4 (“Contested Equality: Jews in the Bohemian Lands, 1861–1917”), written by Michal Frankl, Martina Niedhammer, and Ines Koeltzsch, begins with this crucial political transition. The chapter ends with World War I, just before the demise of the Habsburg monarchy, the imperial structure within which the lives of Jews in Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia had taken shape since the Middle Ages. Not only was the world into which Jews were emancipated very different from that of the Josephinian era, or even 1848, but it continued to change at an unprecedented pace. Migration and a rearrangement of Jewish spaces express the drama of this change. Jews, like non-Jews, migrated—yet in their case, mobility was linked to emancipation and the negotiation of the meanings of Jewishness. While traditional Jewish neighborhoods declined and shrank, other spaces took their place, part of the search for a new Jewish position in society. Jewish communities in small towns and in the countryside that used to be the focal points of Jewish life were caught in decline, in contrast to the new rising urban centers. Jewish Prague, still significant, also shifted: the former Jewish Quarter turned into a social and economic ghetto before it was razed in a massive urban renewal project, which exchanged its narrow streets for modern avenues and left standing only six synagogues, the Jewish Town Hall, and the larger part of the Old Jewish Cemetery. The new neighborhood of Královské Vinohrady (Königliche Weinberge) embodied the new spatial and architectonic forms of Jewish middle-class integration into society. Its grand new synagogue became a powerful symbol of the accommodation, ambition, and ascent of Prague Jews–yet the criticism it evoked also exposed the fragility of this newest phase of Jewish mobility. In contrast to the conventional focus on linguistic identity and the position of Jews “between Czechs and Germans,” Frankl, Niedhammer, and Koeltzsch expand the view by exploring shifts in community, Jewish family, popular culture, and everyday life. In their reading, a Jewish cookbook or a book of popular stories can reveal as much about the change and the attempts to safeguard aspects of the Jewish tradition as the high-level political discourses. They note the special expectations projected on Jewish women, guardians of Jewish traditions and of Jewish family, in the context of reform and secularization, as well as—limited as they remained—conversion and intermarriage.

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The social and cultural changes triggered by emancipation and modernization in the Bohemian Lands overlapped and intersected in numerous ways with the rise of nationalism and the growing intensity and brutalization of the nationality conflict between Germans and Czechs. The nationalist campaigns made it more difficult for Jews to navigate the everyday choices of emancipation and integration. Jewish schools in Bohemia and Moravia became targets of heated controversy, held up as promoters of German cultural hegemony; rarely were their attempts to protect Jewish cultural identity the focus of attention. By 1900 about three-quarters of the German-Jewish schools in Bohemia had closed, partly as the result of political pressure. A question that framed much of the political discussion regarding Jews in the Bohemian Lands during this period concerned the nature of their emancipation: Were Jews simply being accorded civil rights as individuals, or were they being emancipated into one or another national community? In the midst of nationalist controversies, Jews often found themselves to be targets of both Czech and German nationalist critiques. Czech national liberals, by and large, supported Jewish emancipation as a matter of principle but strongly criticized Jews for their supposedly German linguistic and political loyalties. This position implied that national identity was a cultural choice and that Jews were welcomed to become members of the Czech nation. As with other groups, Jews could not participate in society outside of a nationalist framework—even as they strove for social acceptance, they simply could not avoid being identified nationally in terms of language and action. In this way, both the German- and Czech-Jewish integration projects originally made a case for inclusive, liberal nationalism. During the closing decades of the nineteenth century, however, writers, journalists, and politicians began to argue the opposite, denying the possibility of Jewish membership in the Czech nation. The last years of the century witnessed a crisis in Czech-Jewish relations: Antisemitism moved from the margins to the center of political discourse; Czechs rioted against Jews in Bohemia (1897) and Moravia (1899); and the trials against Leopold Hilsner, a Jew from Polná, (1899 and 1900), on the charge of “ritual murder,” had a traumatic effect on Jewish political and social self-confidence. Jews in the Bohemian Lands responded in several ways to the intensified conflict and hardened rhetoric. Czech-Jewish activists searched for new political allies and also adopted a more assertive approach to antisemitism. Jewish students and young professionals experimented during these years with another form of national orientation: Jewish nationalism, notably the cultural Zionism of the Bar Kochba Association, which promoted Jewish cultural renewal along with independence from both Czech and German nationalist struggles and succeeded in attracting numerous Jewish intellectual figures in Bohemia and Moravia both before and after World War I.

Introduction

15

Our authors note how strikingly similar the reformed Czech-Jewish and Zionist reactions to this crisis were. In both cases activists broke with traditional political alliances, promoted mutual assistance and a robust defense against antisemitism, and put forth a positive, self-assured vision of Jewish culture. Jewish modernity in the Bohemian Lands took diverse forms, moved in tandem with broader transformations in society, and was not directed toward some inevitable outcome. The deep transformations of this period could lead to paradoxical outcomes. Opening with a family story in which a son immigrates to the United States to avoid military ser vice in the Habsburg monarchy, Chapter 4 closes with a case of patriotic Jewish ser vice in World War I, and the laying down of a life in a meaningless military operation. This personal sacrifice pointed to what could be seen as the successful integration of Jews into the military, one of the most important Habsburg institutions. Yet, at the same time, the sacrifice was called into question by those who doubted Jews’ loyalty to the nation and eventually to the nation state at the close of the war. Chapter  5 (“Becoming Czechoslovaks: Jews in the Bohemian Lands, 1917– 38”), written by Ines Koeltzsch, Michal Frankl, and Martina Niedhammer, examines the suddenly changed circumstance of Jewish life in the First Czechoslovak Republic, a setting that has often been romanticized as a “golden age” for Jews in Central Europe. The conditions of Jewish life in Czechoslova kia, however, were far from perfect. Violent demonstrations against Jews in the Bohemian Lands broke out in the last two years of World War I, often in the context of food shortages and distribution failures. Riots also attended the creation of the republic, in Holešov (Holleschau), in Moravia, for example, in 1918, when soldiers, supported by the local population, instigated a pogrom, causing two deaths and leaving most Jewish businesses pillaged. Similar rioting occurred in Prague in 1919. While anti-Jewish violence and antisemitism have often been seen as only temporary problems of the multiethnic state, soon to be overcome, the authors of Chapter 5 argue that they never completely disappeared. They argue, moreover, that the relatively low level of antisemitism—compared to neighboring countries— ought to be seen less as a consequence of ethnic or religious tolerance than as an example of pragmatic politics within a society in transition from imperial to democratic order. Koeltzsch, Frankl, and Niedhammer pose two broad questions: How did Jews in the Bohemian Lands react to the dramatic political, social, and cultural changes that took place after 1917–18? And why did Jews come to represent the idealized image of “Czechoslovaks?” By way of answer they offer a complex picture of Jewish society in the interwar period against a background of nationalism and globalization, which marked interwar Czechoslovakia as much as other Central European countries. They illustrate the equally complex Jewish

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Kateřina Čapková and Hillel J. Kieval

responses to their historical experiences by introducing at the beginning of the chapter the life stories of two women—one who experienced the anti-Jewish riots in Prague in 1919 as a teenager and later immigrated to Palestine, and one who grew up in the countryside, where she rarely came in contact with Jewish religious life. These two exceptional stories struggle in different ways with the image of Czechoslova kia as a home for Jews. The chapter traces different aspects of the political engagement of Jews as citizens of a new nation-state, emphasizing the initial importance of the Jewish National Council in Prague for the recognition of Jews both as equal citizens and as a national minority. For the first time, Jews in Czechoslova kia had the option to combine citizenship with Jewish nationality, irrespective of how they identified linguistically or religiously. The liberal nationality politics of the Czechoslovak state toward Jews stimulated not only manifold political engagements, from Zionist to social democratic and radical leftist politics, but also various everyday practices of adoration of Czechoslovak democracy. Tomáš G. Masaryk, the first president of Czechoslovakia, became—like Emperor Franz Joseph I before him—a symbolic guarantor of Jewish well-being and safety. Masaryk’s republic thus relatively quickly managed to be a home for a diverse Jewish population that was marked by significant differences with regard to nationality, language, and social, economic, and demographic patterns. One might say that differences among Czechoslovakia’s three major regions— the Bohemian Lands, Slovakia, and Subcarpathian Rus—loomed larger than earlier distinctions between Bohemia and Moravia, or between Prague and the countryside. In demographic terms, Prague and the Bohemian Lands were now less impor tant than Slovakia and Subcarpathian Rus; culturally and politically, however, “Jewish Prague” exerted a weight that far exceeded its numbers. Urbanization, meanwhile, which had already begun in the late nineteenth century, proceeded apace, with the result that Jewish life in the Bohemian countryside and in the small towns of Moravia underwent a steep decline. Many of the fundamental changes in modern Jewish society in the Bohemian Lands that had already started in the second half of the nineteenth century found new expression in interwar Czechoslova kia. The authors draw on examples from communal life, popular culture, religious life, and literature to portray a vibrant and complex community. Regional Jewish institutions were restructured, and cultural and educational activities reinvigorated—in part by the engagement of Zionists, for example, in the field of Jewish education and gender politics. While traditional gender roles continued to be maintained within Jewish family life, Zionist youth organizations offered images of “new” women (and men), and women began to appear in leading public positions.

Introduction

17

Imaginative literature, produced by Jews as well as non-Jews—among them Franz Kafka, Karel Poláček, and Ivan Olbracht—addressed relations between Jews and non-Jews, the ambiguities of “Jewishness,” and the “exoticism” of Subcarpathian Jewish life. In the face of the fundamental changes in Jewish culture and society, and the decline of Jewish communities in the countryside, reflections on the importance of cultural memory and the preservation of cultural heritage gained currency, too. The Munich Agreement of 1938 and the annexation of large parts of Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia to Germany brought a violent end to the First Republic and, with it, the century-long project in Jewish social and cultural integration in the Bohemian Lands. Antisemitic attitudes and behavior, of course, had never been absent in the First Republic; they were part of the everyday life of Jews in the Bohemian Lands and in other parts of the country. They became more apparent again with the economic crisis and with the rise of Nazism in Germany, especially among German separatists in the so-called Sudetenland. The influx of refugees into the country beginning in 1933 and continuing through the crisis of 1938 also altered Czech discourses about Jews: Increasingly, Jews were declared to be too influential in state and society, a threat and not a resource. Chapter 6 (“The Holocaust in Bohemia and Moravia”), written by Benjamin Frommer, addresses the somber reality of the utter collapse of the historical foundations of Jewish life in the Bohemian Lands under the conditions of foreign occupation and loss of sovereignty. Frommer tackles the two great challenges in writing about the Holocaust, here or in any context: acknowledging the fact that this catastrophe took place—could only have taken place—under the conditions of war and occupation, while maintaining its connection to the larger themes of Jewish history in the region; and focusing on the experiential, human, dimension of this terrible tragedy. The chapter moves from the general to the specific and from policies to their grave effects on individual lives. The history of the Holocaust in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, we learn, took place in stages. The period from March 1939 until the summer of 1941 was one of expropriation and theft of Jewish property, forced emigration, the removal of Jews from most areas of economic life, and escalating antisemitic sanctions—all of which had the effect of creating what amounted to a “ghetto without walls,” which increasingly isolated the region’s Jews from the majority population. In September 1941, SS leader Reinhard Heydrich was named acting Stellvertretender Reichsprotektor; he quickly set out to institute policies aimed at the physical removal of Jews from Bohemia and Moravia and their eventual murder in walled ghettos, killing fields, and extermination centers. From autumn 1941 until early 1943, the vast majority of the region’s Jews boarded transport trains, never to return home. In the last stage, from 1943 to the end of the

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Kateřina Čapková and Hillel J. Kieval

war, the story of Bohemian and Moravian Jewry outside of ghettos and concentration camps belonged primarily to intermarried Jews and their children, so-called Mischlinge. Throughout this grim process, Frommer argues—in Theresienstadt (Terezín) and even, to a limited extent, in ghettos and camps beyond the country’s borders—the Jews of Bohemia and Moravia continued to function as a coherent community, with its own language(s), customs, and internal cohesion. Frommer notes that, although the First Republic was not without its own intolerance, the swing toward anti-Jewish attitudes and policies in the autumn and winter of 1938 shocked the Jews of Bohemia and Moravia. Czechs directed their anger first and foremost at German-speaking Jewish refugees from the borderlands, who tried their best to disappear in a country that had once been their own. The new prime minister of the Second Czecho-Slovak Republic, Rudolf Beran, told parliament in mid-December 1938 that his government would “solve the Jewish problem.” On January 27, the government ordered certain aliens to depart and thoroughly reviewed naturalizations that had taken place since 1918. It also initiated the phased removal of Jews from the state bureaucracy. With the German invasion of March 15, 1939, and the establishment of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, the pretense of Czechoslovak sovereignty had ended. It was the full-fledged assault on Jewish integration that most characterized the creation of the “ghetto without walls” before the autumn of 1941. Jews in the Bohemian Lands were banned from public swimming areas, public transport, and specific eating and drinking establishments. Individual experience of enforced social segregation might vary depending on where a person lived: For urban Jews, the inability to visit the cinema or theatre could feel particularly jolting, while for village Jews, the ban on entering the one local pub could be terribly isolating. For Jews in Prague, limitations and bans on public transportation caused serious hardship, but the prohibition on leaving one’s home district might not necessarily have impinged on daily life. For small-town and village Jews, however, the ban severely disrupted and greatly impoverished their lives. Anti-Jewish policies took a radical turn in the autumn of 1941, first with the order that all Jews were to sew to their outer clothing a yellow star imprinted with the German word Jude. Local antisemites had in fact pushed for such a measure earlier as a means of dissuading non-Jews from fraternizing with Jews. For their part, the police in the Protectorate had repeatedly noted that they could not effectively enforce the antisemitic regulations because the region’s Jews did not differ visibly from the rest of the population. In October 1941, Heydrich ordered Jews in Prague to assemble for transport out of Bohemia and Moravia.

Introduction

19

Over the next several weeks, five trains of a thousand Jews each left the Protectorate for the Lodz ghetto. For the vast majority of the Jews in the Bohemian Lands, forced deportation was to the former garrison town of Theresienstadt (Terezín), emptied of its original residents and transformed into a hybrid ghetto/ internment camp. Terezín has been described by the historian Miroslav Kárný as having had three main purposes: to serve as a concentration and transit center, as a place of murder by attrition, and, finally, as a means of deception, both to the prisoners and to the outside world. For most of its captive inhabitants, it was a way station to the killing centers, including Auschwitz, Belzec, and Treblinka. Of the 68,000 Protectorate Jews deported in mass transports beyond the borders of the former Czechoslova kia, only 3,371 are known to have survived the war. Finally, in Chapter 7 (“Periphery and Center: Jews in the Bohemian Lands from 1945 to the Present”), Kateřina Čapková highlights the many challenges faced by Jews in the Bohemian Lands after the defeat of Germany at the end of World War II. She reminds us that, alongside the demography of destruction and depopulation after the war, there also was a demography of return and repopulation. About half of the Jewish population of the Bohemian Lands immediately after the war was made up of migrants from other parts of the country, including people who often were more religiously observant than local Jews and whose mother tongue was not Czech, but rather Yiddish, Hungarian, Slovak, or Polish. Many of these people, Čapková argues, reinvigorated Jewish religious and cultural life in the 1950s and 1960s, and helped to insure its survival. The transnational dimensions of Jewish life in the Bohemian Lands in fact sharpened after 1945, due to successive waves of Jewish emigration abroad, the important role that international Jewish institutions played in securing Jewish life in the Bohemian Lands, and Czechoslovak international relations. Organizations such as the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee engaged with Jewish communities, and Jews in Czechoslovakia never felt isolated thanks to the social networks connecting them to Jews in the neighboring socialist countries as well as Western Europe, North America, and Israel. Jews in Czechoslova kia were aware of the shift that had occurred in Jewish settlement as a result of genocide, as well as migration to the United States and the newly established State of Israel. The same is true for the Czechoslovak (and, later, Czech) state. Ever aware of the changed international configuration, the state crafted its policies toward local Jews in ways that were always closely connected to its attitude toward Israel and the United States. This is a major reason why, since 1951, the Jewish community has had to withstand anti-Zionist propaganda. Anti-Zionism and antisemitism were

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exploited to such an extent during the Rudolf Slánský affair in 1952 that criticism of anti-Jewish propaganda became an impor tant topic during the de-Stalinization period and the Prague Spring of the late 1960s. Although the affair in fact revealed strong indications of home-grown prejudice, some reform communists argued in 1967–68 that antisemitism was a Soviet import and that socialism “with a human face” had to oppose it. In 1969, only a few months after the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslova kia, anti-Zionist propaganda started anew, claiming the Prague Spring itself as a Zionist conspiracy. Approximately half of the Jews living in Czechoslova kia left the country in the second half of 1960s. There was also, however, a second central feature in the stance of the Czechoslovak government and the local communist party leadership toward the Jewish community. The state claimed to assure its citizens freedom of religion and respect for human rights. This enabled a limited space for negotiation. Moreover, Jewish communities flourished in the 1950s and 1960s as communities overall experienced the postwar baby boom. Jewish communities also organized Holocaust commemorative events, though they were careful to package these events using anti-fascist rhetoric. The state’s position also enabled an ambitious project organized by Hana Volavková, director of the State Jewish Museum, to install a memorial bearing the names of the approximately 78,000 deported Bohemian and Moravian Jews, which was painted on the walls of the Pinkas Synagogue in Prague. For the Jewish community, as with all other religious communities in Czechoslova kia, the 1970s and 1980s marked a period of radical decline in the number of active members who attended religious ser vices. Yet, despite growing pressure—at work, at school, and in universities—to demonstrate political loyalty to the Communist Party, despite the very real costs that parents, educators, and children paid in openly expressing a Jewish identity, Jews found ways to do just that. The years since 1989 have been marked by the fall of the communist government, freedom of religious and cultural expression, the return of Jewish institutions and properties to communal control, the division of Czechoslova kia into separate Czech and Slovak republics (1993), and the entry of the Czech Republic into the European Union (2004). Individual Jews as well as Jewish institutions maintain close, collaborative ties to individuals and institutions in Europe, North America, and Israel. Jewish identity in the contemporary Czech Republic (as elsewhere) is so fluid, so contingent on shifting standards and assumptions, that it is difficult even to ascertain how many Jews there are in the Czech Republic today. Moreover, from the earliest postwar years down to the present, the Nazi policy of superimposing racial criteria onto traditional

Introduction

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religious markers of Jewish identity has left a lasting imprint. So is it 3,000, 15,000, or 20,000? There is no one correct answer, just as there is no single interpretation of Jewish history in the Bohemian Lands. We trust that this volume, in demonstrating the richness and complexity of the Jewish historical experience in this Central European region, will serve as a starting point for further questions and ongoing research.

C h apter 1

The Jews of the Bohemian Lands in Early Modern Times Verena Kasper-Marienberg and Joshua Teplitsky

Introduction In the early decades of the eighteenth century, a young Jewish traveler from northwest Germany made his way across the middle of the European continent, recording his impressions of the places he saw and the people he encountered. The voyager, Abraham Levie, began his travels in the western Holy Roman Empire in 1719, working his way through the German lands before crossing the border into Bohemia. He described the first place he visited there, Eger (Cheb), a well-fortified city that was home to only two Jews. As he traveled farther into the Bohemian interior, he passed through Lichtenstadt (Hroznětín, near Carlsbad), which was home to thirty Jews, and onward to “Blankenau, Sahar, Maschau, and Draschitz, all small towns, and there is nothing more to describe besides the fact that there is an abundance of mineral springs [Sauerbrunnen] all around.”1 Crossing into Prague, Levie described a sense of great contrast from the small settlements of Jews that dotted the Bohemian countryside, noting the strange mixture of “great freedom in some matters and on the other hand unfreedom in other matters.”2 He entered the capital by crossing Charles Bridge and paused to look at a large crucifix adorned in bold golden Hebrew letters, “Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of Hosts” (Isaiah 6:3). A plaque at the foot of the crucifix explained its erection in 1696 as punishment for the supposed blasphemy of a Bohemian Jew, but it obscured the strife within the Jewish community, which had brought these charges to the attention of the city magistrates to begin with.3 Entering the Jewish Town, he marveled at the settlement that encompassed twenty streets surrounded by a wall, within which were

Map 1. Central Europe after the Peace of Westphalia in 1648.

In order to trace key demographic changes in Jewish settlement in the Bohemian Lands, the same twenty-three Jewish communities are shown on the maps throughout this book. The percentage indicates the size of each Jewish community in relation to the total number of Jews in the Bohemian Lands in the period represented. An “x” indicates that no Jewish community existed in that location at the time. For further information on these Jewish communities, see the supplementary essay by Helena Klímová and Lenka Matušíková.

Map 2. Jewish Population of the Bohemian Lands circa 1700 (approx. 20,000).

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housed eight great synagogues, replete with ornate decorations and Torah scrolls, one of which had once hosted the famous cantor Yekele the Hazzan.4 Levie remarked on the unusual practice of instrumental accompaniment by organ at the Friday evening ser vices that welcomed the Sabbath.5 In this bustling quarter Jews were involved in a variety of occupations (such as shoemakers, tailors, and barbers), and conducted trade in a distinct Jewish market outside of the Jewish Town itself. As he continued onward, he saw other towns in Bohemia with Jewish communities of 100 to 150 inhabitants. He visited the large towns of Moravia and resided there for six months, noting the daily presence of Jews even in places that legally forbade their permanent residence, as well as large numbers of “foreign” Jewish students (generally young men) sporting the fur coats and other fashions more common to neighboring Poland, and the constitutional arrangements of the supra-communal organization of all of Moravia’s Jews.6 Levie perceptively observed aspects of Jewish life that historians of the modern era have only begun to fully examine, in his apprehension of the great difference between Prague and the villages and towns of Bohemia and Moravia, and the material representations of difference in dress, custom, and other aspects of culture. And with good reason. Prague, an imperial city that had once briefly served as the seat of the Habsburg monarchy, exerted a great centripetal pull on the economic, social, and intellectual life of the Bohemian Lands, for Jews as much as for Christians. And yet the story of Jewish life in the Bohemian Lands is not one of Prague alone. In Moravia, Jews lived in several large towns that regularly interacted with each other. Levie was rather dismissive of the tiny Jewish settlements he observed in Bohemia, but by the close of the seventeenth century some two-thirds of the Jewish population resided outside the capital in a diffuse hinterland, with strong ties to Prague but also impor tant linkages among the rural settlements with their own culture and ritual economy. On the one hand, the Jews of Prague, Bohemia, and Moravia continuously negotiated and coordinated their activities; on the other hand, they maintained degrees of legal, political, and cultural distinction from one another. At times, each of the regions there displayed greater affinities in structure and culture with Jewish communities beyond the Bohemian Lands than with those within. Levie further anticipated modern historical observations in his attention to the richness of Jewish local cultural practices, and the contexts of quotidian interaction between Jews and Christians, which were at times hostile and at other times convivial. The story of early modern Jewish life in the Bohemian Lands unfolded along three intersecting axes: within the unequal legal and demographic areas of Bohemia, Moravia, and Prague; between the structures of Jewish life and its wider non-Jewish, often Christian, local surroundings; and

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Figure 1. Crucifix with the Hebrew inscription “Holy, Holy, Holy Is the Lord of Hosts” (Isaiah 6:3), Charles Bridge, Prague. © Daniel Ort, 2019.

across the features of Jewish life that were shared with Jews throughout Europe and yet regionally particular to the Jews of the Bohemian Lands.

Ideals of Distinctiveness: Legal and Political Structures Jewish historical chronicles recorded a Jewish presence in the Bohemian Lands since the middle of the tenth century. Their legal protection under the various ruling dynasties of Přemyslids, Luxembourgs, Jagiellonians, and eventually Habsburgs had been renewed at various points during their history. Notably in 1254, Ottokar II granted permission for Jewish moneylending activities and condemned ritual-murder accusations. Over the course of the later Middle Ages, the rights of the Holy Roman Emperor to protect Jews were at times sold or devolved onto lords and other nobles, making the guarantees of Jewish privileges subject to more localized pressures but also expanding the spheres of the parties interested in upholding them. The early modern period opened with major dislocations for Europe’s Jewish populations, which significantly affected the crown lands. A series of expulsions from the western Holy Roman

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Empire over the course of the sixteenth century propelled Jews from west to east, sending them in search of new homes in the Bohemian Lands, Poland, and the Ottoman Empire.7 Policies toward Jewish settlement followed a wider European pattern of burgher agitation for the exclusion of Jews from urban residence, against which the monarchy and nobility weighed the utility of Jewish mercantile activity and the revenues it generated for the state. In Moravia, burgher demands for the expulsion of Jews from the royal free boroughs began in 1426 and reached their climax in 1454, resulting in their resettlement in the small and medium-sized noble-owned towns in the south of the province, like Austerlitz (Slavkov), Holleschau (Holešov), and Nikolsburg (Mikulov). In Silesia a wave of expulsions from towns like Glogau and Breslau began in the mid-fifteenth century amid host desecration libels, which culminated in a complete expulsion edict from all of Silesia by Ferdinand I (r. 1526–64) in 1559, leaving behind only a handful of Jewish settlements protected by special privileges.8 In 1541 burgher campaigns excluded Jews from most royal boroughs in Bohemia with the major exception of Prague, which only narrowly escaped a similar fate when Emperor Ferdinand I issued an expulsion decree in 1557. Never fully enforced, this decree was remanded in 1564 with the accession to the throne of Maximilian II (r. 1564–76). Over the next half century, the Jewish population of Prague grew from a few dozen to more than three thousand, while across the remainder of the countryside Jews dispersed into smaller settlement patterns, often with no more than one or two families residing in a rural village.9 The politics of the Reformation era brought further developments to Jews’ rights of settlement in Bohemia and Prague, where the bloodiest conflict of the period, the Thirty Years’ War, began. Following the Defenestration of Prague in 1618 and the defeat of the “Winter King” Frederick V (r. 1619–20) and his Protestant forces at the Battle of White Mountain in 1620, the Habsburg monarchs undertook a campaign to “re-Catholicize” their hereditary lands. The eviction of Protestant families from Prague facilitated the growth of the Jewish street into a Jewish Town in its own right, and a new privilege from Emperor Ferdinand II (r. 1619–37) in 1623 secured Jewish rights of residence and commerce in Bohemia and offered protection against expulsion.10 A 1629 privilege to the Jews of Moravia—sometimes called their “Magna Carta”—similarly established their rights and duties, with little modification for the next 125 years. The Jewish population grew in response to these largely favorable conditions. While estimates count about 3,000 Jewish individuals in the Bohemian Lands in the midsixteenth century, censuses of the early eighteenth century report between 30,000 and 42,000 Jewish individuals.11 At the same time, however, the conclusion of the Thirty Years’ War saw a renewal in the tug-of-war between monarchy and burghers with the issuance of a limiting Judenpatent in 1648, the establishment of

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commissions to reduce Jewish settlement after 1650, and the acme of anti-Jewish legislation with the passage of the Familiants Laws (Familiantengesetze) in 1726 and 1727, which limited residence across the Bohemian crown lands.12 Shaped by different legal and political privileges, the divergent settlement patterns of Bohemia, Moravia, and Prague resulted in varied configurations of Jews’ self-governance of their own communal, religious, and social lives. Each half of the crown lands resembled the political culture of its regional neighbors, revealing that political imaginations did not stop at territorial boundaries. The Bohemian countryside, with its many rural Jewish settlements, resembled the organization of Jewish life in the Holy Roman Empire, while the Moravian part mirrored Poland-Lithuania’s more urbanized Jewish settlement patterns, with their attendant communal structures.13 Since the Middle Ages, Jews across Europe had been constituted as a semiautonomous corporation within the larger scheme of a city or town’s political topography. Granted this delegated autonomy by local sovereigns, Jews developed a system of internal self-governance called a kehillah (pl. kehillot), which took responsibility for the collection of taxes for remittance to the state and administered Jews’ own social, communal, and religious affairs.14 Although this pattern of delegated autonomy and self-administration obtained across Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East—wherever Jews lived as a minority within a larger population—the form and structure of their administration varied considerably according to circumstances of law and demography. The communities of Moravia most closely resembled the autonomous Jewish communities historians imagine when they depict Jewish life in Eu rope before Emancipation. They drafted communal ordinances (Hebr. takkanot) that regulated electoral procedures for the communities’ leadership, created protocols for taxation, and established courts to resolve disputes between Jews. The kehillah also oversaw the administration of ritual life by appointing rabbis, teachers, preachers, and kosher butchers, as well as midwives, circumcisers, charitable funds, and burial societies— a system of welfare provision from cradle to grave.15 The governing structures of these communal institutions survive in the form of the copious records created and preserved by the communities, testimony to a culture of administration, organization, and the wider regimes of governmentality that arose in the early modern period across the European continent.16 The surviving records from the community of Trebitsch (Třebíč), south Moravia, for example, covering the years from 1674 to 1803, discuss the regulation of mandatory contributions of alms for the poor, provisions for male students of Torah and their curricular regimen, the allocation of honors in the synagogue, electoral and legislative protocol, and of course taxation, among other topics.17

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Jewish life in the western part of the lands of the Bohemian Crown diverged from the Moravian pattern on either extreme: in the unusually large size of the Prague community, and in the small and scattered settlement patterns of the Bohemian rural countryside. Although the Jews of Moravia resided in designated “quarters”—the equivalent of the ghettos of Frankfurt and Venice— Prague’s Jewish quarter was so populous that it gained the status of a town, a Judenstadt.18 By the beginning of the eighteenth century, the Jewish community of Prague had become the largest urban settlement of Jews in Christian Europe, with an estimated 11,500 Jewish residents. Prague was home to multiple synagogues and Jewish courts, and had its own wider apparatus of self-governance, including night watchmen and a town hall. For much of the seventeenth century, Prague Jews maintained an autonomous system of self-governance that was decided by regular elections in often acrimonious partisan competition; it was helmed by a primas, effectively the mayor of the Jewish Town. In contrast to both Prague and the larger towns of Moravia, Bohemia had only a few significant urban communities—such as Kolin (Kolín), Raudnitz (Roudnice), Jungbunzlau (Mladá Boleslav), and Nachod (Náchod)—that functioned as local economic and regional religious hubs for the Bohemian rural Jewish societies. Those local centers had well-established Jewish communities of sometimes several hundred members and regionally influential rabbinates and yeshivot.19 However, the majority of Bohemian Jews lived in much smaller settlements, without formal communities, and their transitory character meant that their privileges of settlement were the subject of recurring negotiation. For example, in the small market town of Frauenberg (Hluboká nad Vltavou) in southern Bohemia, which was home to only about six Jewish families in the 1670s, two Jewish men, Adam Kauder and Jacob Alexander, competed for protection and residential privileges, which was subjected to quotas and the whim of noble lords. Over the course of a protracted legal battle, they maligned each other’s reputations and outbid each other in remitting protection fees to the noble lord, Johann Adolph von Schwarzenberg. Kauder’s ultimate success still required regular renewals of his privilege and only in 1697 did he succeed in obtaining the first protection contract to last for five years in a row. By 1695 Kauder lived with his own immediate family, as well as eight Jewish servants and their families, in a shared house that included a prayer room, but their settlement did not develop into an official community with statutes and a governing apparatus until the second half of the eighteenth century.20 What both halves of the Bohemian Lands had in common was the fact that they established modes of collective organization that transcended any single locale or settlement. Both in Bohemia (outside Prague) and in Moravia, Jews came together to form regional associations. In Bohemia these associations were

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aggregates of individual Jews or of Jewish families, whereas in Moravia they were associations of entire communities. The western (Bohemian) model hewed closely to patterns in the German lands of Jewish regional and supra-regional communal structures. Unlike in officially constituted urban communities, where membership was often determined by income, social rank, gender, and marital status, in the countryside contribution to the regional association—and therefore a voice in its institutions—generally defaulted to heads of household.21 These administrative organizations were generally called Landesjudenschaften and referred to an imagined Jewish regional space often called a medinah (land). In the Bohemian countryside the Landesjudenschaft was created after the Thirty Years’ War amid the administrative tension between state centralization and the liberties of nobles in their own holdings; these nobles used the associations as tools for better control and taxation of Jewish families living on their estates.22 The structure of the newly created Landesjudenschaft better matched the Bohemian political landscape, with its territorial borders and administrative districts. It thus gained strong support from non-Jewish authorities, even over the opposition of Prague’s Jewish leadership, who stood to lose a significant taxation basis. Remarkably, the first documents that give evidence to the constitution of the Landesjudenschaft in 1659 were titled “police ordinances” rather than takkanot, attesting to the strong non-Jewish political influences on its structure.23 The Moravian regional association, by comparison, developed very differently. In addition to local communal autonomy, in 1650 the Jewish communities of Moravia established a federated regional council (va’ad ha-medinah) which drafted a series of supra-communal statutes (shai takkanot).24 In both structure and title, the Moravian regional council resembled the supra-communal association of Poland’s Jews, the Council of Four Lands (va’ad arba’ aratsot).25 Moravian Jewry’s supra-communal body convened once every three years on a rotating basis among the different provinces of Moravia and, unlike in Bohemia’s tendentious relationship with Prague, was careful to preserve at least a semblance of balance in not favoring any single community over the others as a leading or capital body. At its triennial meetings the leadership issued new regulations for taxation, electoral procedures, charitable disbursement, and even curricula for young men’s study. A common feature of both types of association was that they appointed a chief rabbi who formally presided over the association, ruled on its procedures, and was an address for appeal in the event of local stalemates. But even this rabbinate was far from a static, unchanging institution. In Moravia two rabbis sometimes laid claim to the title of chief rabbi at once, which could result in

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significant controversy. In Bohemia the very creation of a distinct regional rabbinate was highly contested, since traditionally the supreme rabbinic power had always been in the hands of the Prague community.26 The post of chief rural rabbi (Oberlandesrabbiner) was held independent of the Prague chief rabbinate only for a little more than two decades. By 1717 David Oppenheim, the chief rabbi of Prague, held both titles once more, at which point he oversaw a process that established district rabbis—to preside over the preparation of kosher food, marriage and divorce, education, and ritual—hierarchically positioned under the chief rabbi’s guidance and authority.27 Fi nally, the structures of Jewish settlement and political organization were never isolated from the competing interests of the individuals who populated them and the intervention they invited from forces external to the local Jewish community. In his sixteenth- century chronicle, Josel of Rosheim (1480–1554), named “commander-in-chief” (Befehlshaber) of German Jewry by Emperor Maximilian I (r. 1508–19), reported on a communal dispute that soon encompassed the Jews of Prague, Bohemia, and ultimately authorities from still farther afield. Josel reports: In the year 5294 [1533/34], there was dissension and strife [within] the Holy Community of Prague between the community and the Horowitz people and others, and consequently many feuding camps arose in the other communities in Bohemia. The rabbis of Germany and Posen wrote [urging] that an agreement be reached, and that the settlement of the disputes be entrusted to righteous men. . . . At the request and insistence of our rabbis, I journeyed with much toil and trouble to that great city to God. . . . We prepared and enacted 23 excellent and estimable regulations, and upwards of 400 adult and responsible men were pleased to come and sign the document. Josel’s attempt was far from unanimously accepted. He continues: “However, while I was still at the table, the spikenard sent forth its fragrance, a supporter of Horowitz and his faction by the name of Shabbat Tash contrived to have me delivered into the hands of murderers. I had to plead in my defense three times in the city fortress of Prague, and all the community supported me.” Happily for Josel, he “emerged blameless and unscathed from the lion’s clutches.”28 Several cases of successful intercession on behalf of different Jewish communities both in the Bohemian Lands and in the Holy Roman Empire gave the Prague Jewish community the status of a representative of all Jews in the

Figure 2. Johann Georg Balzer, Portrait of Rabbi David Oppenheim, copper engraving, 1772. © Jewish Museum in Prague.

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German lands at Rudolph’s court. Following the example of Josel of Rosheim, the Prague Jew Jacob Fröschl was designated to facilitate any Jewish cause brought before the Imperial Supreme Court, and he therefore stayed and traveled with the court at all times.29 Prague’s leading political role for the central European Jewish communities would in the seventeenth century be eventually ceded to Vienna, along with the move of the imperial court back to Austria. The constant struggles among different factions and individuals in the Prague community over leadership during the sixteenth century became a common topic of discussion among rabbis in Prague and beyond. When, in 1579, the Horowitz faction led an organized coup against the elected community leadership, a severe crisis developed in the Jewish community that had to be settled through mediation and legal proceedings before the Bohemian chamber. In 1635 the Bohemian authorities intervened yet again and installed a new election protocol for the community leadership, which ensured more stability but also a more direct intervention by non-Jewish officials.30 This relationship between urban center and wider rural landscape meant that conflicts between powerful Jewish individuals in the countryside were sometimes fought in proxy in Prague. The election of the first Landesrabbiner heading the Landesjudenschaft of the Bohemian countryside in the 1670s exposed rifts between different district representatives. Allying themselves with one of the two competing candidates from Prague and Jungbunzlau, region-wide factions clashed and created a stalemate that eventually required the intervention of the Imperial Court and the Bohemian Chamber in Vienna.31 Intervention could sometimes have dramatic and far-reaching results. Bohemian competition over the chief rabbinate resulted in repeated electoral instability and led ultimately to the dissolution of the Prague community leadership in 1691, and re-elections on the orders of Emperor Leopold I. By 1703 Prague’s “long-term strife, factionalism, and disorder” impelled the Habsburg monarchy to completely abolish the electoral character of the Jewish community of Prague, replacing it with a permanent ruling oligarchy.32

Realities of Interconnection: Migration, Mobility, and Economic Activity Although the Jews of each territory of the Bohemian Lands enjoyed distinct legal privileges that affected their rights of residence and patterns of settlement, they were never hermetically sealed off from each other. The boundaries between them were regularly traversed by flows of people, goods, and ideas, making their legal distinction a real ity in theory alone. Both the large-scale migration of

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people and the patterns of mobility of individuals for economic purposes, ritual life, and marriage arrangements were regular features of Jewish life in the early modern period.33 In Bohemia the Thirty Years’ War in particular had a long-lasting effect not only on rural Jewish settlement patterns but also on the profile of Jewish communities and living conditions for Jews. The Bohemian Lands saw some of the most devastating destruction and atrocities among its European neighbors, with in some places up to 50 percent of its population killed by violence or disease.34 Bohemians who identified as Protestants, among them members of the highest nobility and large landowners but also burghers and artisans, migrated mostly to neighboring territories.35 As Catholic nobles, new and old, replaced some of the former elites and more than half of the noble land changed owners, manorial lords generated new economic opportunities for Jewish merchants in their territories, since they were faced with a lack of professional resources.36 These demographic shifts posed profound challenges to the larger social and political structure of the region in general and for the Jews there in particular. The difficult conditions of war and impoverishment during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries accelerated the pace of mobility for many Central Europeans. Jewish men and women were affected by this phenomenon as well and witnessed this process unfold in particular ways. The historian Jonathan Israel has noted that the circumstances of the Thirty Years’ War had an important impact on the diffusion of Central European Jewry, who “fanned out” geographically into new regions and domains of settlement, and also into new economic occupations that had not previously been open to them.37 Events beyond the Bohemian Lands also significantly impacted the demographic makeup of Jewish life there. When the Khmelnytsky Uprising of 1648 turned its ire against the Jews of eastern Poland-Lithuania, waves of refugees fled westward. The greater number of Polish refugees came to Moravia, which bordered Poland’s western regions, where they were absorbed into the existing urban communities.38 Just over two decades later, in 1670–71, the expulsion of Jews from Vienna and neighboring Lower Austria created further demographic pressures on Jewish life in Moravia. The refugees either created new settlements along the other side of the Lower Austrian-Moravian border or joined the existing Moravian communities.39 A statute of the Moravian regional association from 1677 expresses its attempt to cope with and administer these newcomers by regulating the new arrivals’ right to hold office, distinguishing between legal and temporary residents.40 Noble lords in Bohemia were as heedful of these changing demographics as the leaders of Moravia’s Jewish communities, but they saw opportunity, and not solely challenges. In 1670 Johann Adolph von Schwarzenberg debated the pos-

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sibility of attracting some of the emigrating Austrian Jews to his estate in Frauenberg (Hluboká nad Vltavou) in South Bohemia. His estate manager advised him that “Viennese Jewish emigrants . . . want to settle only in big and well-built towns where they can have good life and merchandise,” revealing a common perception even among Christians of an urban profile of the Vienna expellees, which would result in their favoring similar urban destinations rather than rural places.41 Despite these perceptions, however, Jews did indeed migrate in significant numbers into the countryside. In 1724 the 300- to 400- member Jewish community of the north Bohemian town of Böhmisch Leipa (Česká Lípa) reportedly included two-thirds native and one-third “foreign” members. Their places of origin included Prague, provincial communities such as Jungbunzlau, Auscha (Úštěk), Libochowitz (Libochovice), Raudnitz, as well as more distant communities like Eidlitz (Údlice), Kolin, Nachod, Postelberg (Postoloprty), and Radeschin (Radešín). One family came from the Holy Roman Empire, one from Austria, one from Moravia, two families from Poland (including the Polish rabbi Markus Kohn).42 The composition of this community demonstrates the influx of migrants from foreign countries—pushed from elsewhere and pulled by inviting factors such as favorable economies or a more attractive intellectual milieu. It further attests to the dynamic mobility of the rural Jewish population that occurred on a regional as well as supra-regional level within the Bohemian Lands. Jews’ continued association with their locations of origin reflects enduring patterns of local identification even as larger currents of migration swept both Jews and non-Jews into new settings.43 The war accelerated the nobility’s rise to prominence. In turn, as the nobles consolidated their land holdings, they were in need of mercantile agents to stimulate the exchange of goods across the villages and towns that dotted their large landed estates, in turn creating opportunities for the newly arriving Jews.44 One especially striking example of this entrance into new economic spheres, which resulted in closer links between Jews of different locations, was the emergence of a large number of Jews in courtly ser vice. The Bohemian Lands of the sixteenth century were the site of some of the earliest activities of Jews in the exclusive ser vices of the upper nobility and royal courts. They combined economic courtly ser vices to their lords with patronage of local Jewish communities and their institutions. This was true both for the country estates and for the city of Prague. Mordecai Maisel (1528–1601) financed significant projects for Emperor Rudolph II (r. 1576–1612) and in return received privileges that he used for the greater benefit of Jewish settlement in Prague, including the paving of the streets of the Jewish Town, the renovation of the Jewish Town Hall, and the establishment of a bathhouse. Jacob Bassevi (1570–1634), who held the position

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of a court financier (Hofbankier) to General Albrecht von Wallenstein and was eventually granted the title of ennoblement “von Treuenberg,” sponsored one of Jewish Prague’s grandest synagogues (Velkodvorská synagoga). The height of Jewish courtly activity was in the period between 1650 and 1750. Although the most famous of these courtly agents (Hofagenten) were in the imperial capital in Vienna and other sovereign courts of the Holy Roman Empire, they represent only the brightest stars in an entire constellation of networked activity among Jews in courtly services across Europe. Their interconnected economic, political, and familial activity drew the different geographies of Jewish life into closer contact. The utility of Jewish financiers and merchants to royal and noble courts derived from their ability to marshal and centralize resources in aspiring mercantilist noble economies that provided rulers with a means to enhance trade, finance war, and promote prestige through the construction of elaborate dwellings. Courtly culture as an expression of high status and power developed as a ubiquitous phenomenon of the noble world in Central Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Most noble families who could possibly afford it tried to live up to the prestige expectations that were set in the royal centers of Europe, imitating, among other things, architectural enterprises and the courtly way of life in their dynastic headquarters.45 Bohemia registered 1,347 land-owning noble families in 1603, and about 1,800  in Silesia at the end of the sixteenth century.46 This trend of courtly consumption was especially prevalent among the power-consolidating high nobility in Bohemia, which would eventually absorb many of the smaller noble holdings and sought means to represent their newly gained—and therefore insufficiently respected—status. The activities of Court Jews extended past the capital and across the Bohemian Lands. Some Bohemian Court Jews lived in the countryside while maintaining strong economic ties with Prague and other urban centers like Vienna. Abraham Aaron Lichtenstadt (d. 1702), Court Jew of the duke of Saxe-Lauenburg in the northwest of the German lands, serves as one such example. The family of his German noble protector, Julius Franz, duke of SaxeLauenburg, had acquired the Bohemian manor of Schlackenwerth (Ostrov nad Ohří) at the western border of Bohemia in 1666 as reward for its loyalty to the Catholic emperor during the Thirty Years’ War.47 The duke of Saxe-Lauenburg solidified his new holdings by constructing an opulent castle and installed his court agent Abraham Aaron in the rural Jewish community of Lichtenstadt, which was part of the manor and in a commutable distance from the main town of the district, Carlsbad (Karlsbad, Karlovy Vary).48 Lichtenstadt created a large trade network that connected his noble patron to agents across Bohemia and beyond, for example, to the imperial court in Vienna and the annual fair

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in Leipzig. Lichtenstadt’s access to the territorial ruler granted him influence within Jewish communal life as well. He served as a leading representative of the Bohemian Landesjudenschaft, combining wealth and prestige with political influence within Bohemian Jewish elite circles.49 Beyond the courtly elite, other Jews of lower economic standing also performed impor tant roles in consolidating noblemen’s holdings and integrating the rural economy into that of the privately owned towns. As in most of early modern Europe, agricultural cultivation dominated the economy of the Bohemian Lands. While Moravia was more urban in character, it lacked a major urban center like Prague. Unlike in the neighboring Holy Roman Empire or Austria, many Bohemian peasants were bound in a personal labor bondage (called robot) to their manorial lords rather than in a contribution-based bondage.50 This unfavorable legal status of peasants created stronger societal hierarchies and the potential for conflict in the countryside. Jews were generally exempt from this personal status but mediated between manorial power and peasant labor forces. The economic profile of Bohemia’s Jews encompassed a diversity of economic roles, which were likely supported by the large-scale movement of people and the expertise they brought in tow. Bohemia’s Jews synthesized the distinct economic activities performed by Jews in the Holy Roman Empire and Upper Austria, on the one hand, with those found in the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth, on the other.51 In the rural belts that ser viced the urban markets of Prague and the towns of Moravia, we can observe forms of small-scale trade which resembled German-Jewish occupations such as small-scale creditors, cattle-dealers, and middlemen merchants that bridged peasant and urban societies.52 Farther away from the urban centers, however, most of the Bohemian agricultural production was centralized under the manorial administration during the fifteenth century in patterns resembling that of the Polish-Lithuanian model.53 Consequently, local Jewish merchants often had to trade a large amount and variety of manorial goods, like dairy products and agricultural produce, for a geographically widespread market in order to maintain residency. They facilitated a triangular exchange among manorial administration, peasants, and market, rather than a direct contract between lord and peasant producers.54 Jews were so vital to this economy of the commonwealth that some held almost manorial sway over the local peasant population due to the aggregation of manorial monopolies. To a smaller extent we can see similarly monopolistic relationships between Jewish merchants and their manorial lords in the Bohemian Lands.55 Bohemian rural Jews increasingly integrated into local manorial economic production and trade during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, with their

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activities in pisciculture, timber trade, raw textile trade, and textile manufacturing, but also the lease of distilleries and potash production. The distinct idea of privileged Jewish residents who were in charge of turning manorial economic products into capital is encapsulated in the term “turn into silver” (Versilbern), which was a standard commitment in residency contracts for Jews in the Bohemian countryside.56 Jewish involvement in artisanry and other crafts—rather than trade and exchange—was a deviation from the patterns prevalent in the German territorial economies, whose privileged guild structures barred Jews from entering most forms of manufacture.57 Combining therefore a diverse mix of regionally specific economic occupations from the Holy Roman Empire to Poland, the Bohemian Jewish economic profile in the countryside seems to be more diverse than its equivalent in all the immediately neighboring regions. Despite counter-measures by Habsburg administrators, like the implementation of residential quotas in 1650 and 1726, the number of Bohemian Jews grew steadily, and they became increasingly embedded in local as well as transnational merchant networks.58 Trade was the most prominent motor of mobility, but it was far from the only reason for people to move. The movement of merchants was paralleled by that of (male) students and scholars. For much of the early modern period, Polish rabbis and rabbinical education dominated the European Jewish landscape and supplied Jewish communities across the continent with its scholarly leadership, which meant that many young male students traveled, by necessity, beyond the boundaries of Bohemia to receive an education.59 With the ravages of the midseventeenth century in Poland, that process was reversed; Levie himself noted the presence of numerous “foreign” youth who had come to study in Moravia.60 Movement for the purpose of learning also moved students from place to place within the Bohemian Lands. An anonymous Bohemian chronicle from the seventeenth century offers a sense of the travels of young people as it recounts the life of a young man from Lichtenstadt whose family was expelled from the town in 1675 and found refuge in Humpoletz (Humpolec). The young man’s father sent his son, at the child’s behest, to Herschmanik, then Meseritch, and finally to Prague.61 The completion of study and the certification of a rabbi did not spell the end of such wanderings. A rabbinic career often entailed significant mobility from one community to another, which in turn forged ties between scholars of disparate locations and the students they taught who, in turn, occupied posts of ritual and religious leadership as well. Famous rabbis, such as Judah Loew [Maharal], Yom-Tov Lipmann Heller, Gabriel Eskeles, and David Oppenheim, all moved between Nikolsburg and Prague as way stations in their careers as chief rabbis.62 Others who did not serve as chief rabbis but performed other

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functions in the Jewish communities of Bohemia and Moravia, such as preacher, ritual butcher, or appellate judge, moved in circuits from post to post within and beyond these regions as well. Some even held multiple rabbinic posts at once, like Barukh Austerlitz, who was simultaneously the rabbi of Kolin and a preacher in Prague.63 The mobility of women is somewhat more difficult to track given the nature of surviving sources. It is likely that Jewish daughters of lower-class families worked as domestic servants, and still likelier that many did so far from the homes of their families. Marriage was still a further motor of mobility. Marriage strategies were an important means of securing children’s material wellbeing and a family’s social standing, and often depended upon professional matchmakers who had knowledge about unmarried youth beyond the reach of an immediate locale. The statutes of the Moravian va’ad regulated these professional matchmakers and their activities, and established fixed sums for their salaries, perhaps in acknowledgment that the demand for their ser vices might be exploited, capping the expense of finding a match from outside the town, “whether it be near or far,” at a surcharge of half of a percent.64 At times the movement of people for marriage could produce problems when they crossed Jewish jurisdictions. In late summer 1707, Hendele, the daughter of Joseph Stadthagen, arrived in Prague from Altona, in the north of the Holy Roman Empire. Recently widowed, she had gained special dispensation from a rabbi in Altona to remarry, in contravention of a long-standing religious precept that prohibited a widow or divorcee from remarrying within two years of the birth of a child she was still nursing. When Hendele, her four children, and their wetnurse arrived in Prague, however, one of Prague’s two chief rabbis, Abraham Broda, denied her permission to marry. Broda’s overturning of the previous legal decision given in Altona soon generated a controversy that provoked involvement from rabbis across the continent and ultimately impelled Broda to resign from his post in Prague and take up a position at the opposite end of the Holy Roman Empire, in Metz.65 The wider branches of kinship networks and communities of scholars and merchants preserved points of contact across spatial divides through the medium of letters. In late autumn of 1619, while the Thirty Years’ War was still expected to be a localized conflict between estates and monarchy, a postal courier carried a sack of letters from Prague that were meant for recipients in Vienna. Through a strange twist of history, the letters did not arrive in Vienna, and they were ultimately deposited in the Habsburg archives, rather than being scattered to and discarded by their intended recipients. The pages of these fifty-four letters in Hebrew and Yiddish offer a snapshot of daily life in Jewish Prague, and reflect the wider connections of Prague Jews in other domains of the Habsburg

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monarchy.66 Many were written in the midst of last shopping at the market and preparations for Shabbat, which was about to begin when the messenger collected the letters. They were almost exclusively written by parents, spouses, siblings, uncles, aunts, children, cousins, step- and grandchildren to their relatives in Vienna. Hanokh b. Israel Hamerschlag, for example, chastised his son and daughter-in-law about their failure to perform the most common family duty to bridge geographical distance, saying, “and [I] cannot understand what became of you that you are so inconsiderate toward your father and mother and don’t take into account what times we live in, and that you don’t write even though you know that it is such a sorrow for us when others get letters almost every week and you send one not even every eight or ten weeks, and if you write it is a shitty letter of five or six lines.”67 Letters were expected to be exchanged in regular intervals and to be of a certain length and depth, updating not only both sides on recent news but also actively strengthening the emotional ties of kin. Practical instructions on financial transactions, business procedures, and information about people and goods in motion were included together with formulaic expressions of affection, blessings, and loyalty. Kele, a daughter of one Auberl Auerbach, facilitated marriage arrangements across several borders for an unknown groom with a letter to her uncle Israel Auerbach, writing, “my son Lipman has written from Poland that he wants to come with your groom, so write me, if he should come with him to Vienna or not. I should write you how we are, but you can probably guess, we are filled with fear every day, have no income, and every thing is expensive.”68 The existential threat of war also troubled Salomon Auerbach, who took up his quill to write the father-in-law of his son, “I cannot know if the letters will arrive, but I have to write a few lines, so you will have to as well, and I beg you, I entrust my children to you. I can imagine that living in Vienna these days is also not what it is supposed to be. Please see to my son, so he finds a position and can stay with his family.”69 Family networks served as a trustworthy job market but became a necessity of survival especially in times of crisis, when resources and opportunities were scarce. It was precisely the scarcity of resources that drove still other circuits of mobility between Jewish communities of early modern Central Europe: the wanderings of the poor. Given the stringent rules governing the rights of residence that were imposed both by municipal authorities and by Jews’ own bylaws, an entire underclass of Jews in Central Europe existed with no legal rights of residence and no ties to the land, and who continuously took to the road. Some estimates have placed their numbers in the thousands. Jewish civil and religious leaders devised new genres of writing to cope with the situation of these vagrant Jews (Betteljuden). Early evidence of their wanderings appears in the thirteenth-

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century writings of the Bohemian rabbi Isaac ben Moses of Vienna, who mentions Jews who wandered from one place to another with a letter in hand soliciting donations, and this practice continued through the late eighteenth century, when it was mentioned by Prague’s chief rabbi Ezekiel Landau as well. These donation letters developed into a recognized genre, and communities possessed samples of signatures of Jewish notables in order to authenticate the letters in the hands of these wanderers.70 Only the “deserving poor” were permitted the use of these documents, while a still poorer sector of Jewish society was left to fend for itself in other, illicit, ways.

Cultural Engagements Efforts to maintain political and legal boundaries, on the one hand, and the messier realities of migration, economic interaction, and social exchange, on the other, have their parallels in the domains of culture as well. Jews and their neighbors interacted in a variety of ways. Constructions of polemics and images of hostility could mask contact and cooperation, but, by the same token, cultural exchange could belie significant social fissures and mutual mistrust.71 Although Jewish cultural production was rooted in centuries of tradition that began with the Bible and Talmud, and its conversations and reception transcended the boundaries of the Bohemian Lands, it also engaged with local events and styles, and inflected the wider aspects of Bohemian life in a distinctly Jewish key. The legal writings of the thirteenth-century scholar Isaac b. Moses of Vienna (c. 1180–c. 1250), the author of the work Or Zarua, referred to the Bohemian vernacular as “the language of the land of Canaan,” and took recourse to the local patois to explain concepts of rabbinic thought. Consonant with Jewish practice in other parts of the continent, this transposition of ancient names to contemporary places revealed a strategy for diasporic living that represented their local context—Bohemia—in biblical terms, a home in the Jewish imagination. Just as they rendered the names of the lands in which they dwelled into particular Jewish idioms, Jewish authors also creatively found ways to weave a Jewish presence into major events in local history. In the midst of the Hussite Wars (1419–34), a Hebrew chronicle from the early fifteenth century absorbed the accusation leveled against the Hussites as “Judaizers” and transvalued this claim as a badge of Jewish importance. The chronicle, Gilgul bnei Husim (The Hussite cycle), claims that Jan Hus (c. 1370–1415) had learned his teachings from Wenceslaus IV of Bohemia (1378–1419), who had in turn learned it from the rabbi, poet, and kabbalist Avigdor Kara (d. 1439).72 A legend regarding the “Jewish Hat” as an emblem of the Prague community harkened to collective memories

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of loyalty to the Habsburg dynasty during the Bohemian Revolt of 1618–20, and evinced a similar sense of Jewish belonging. To participate in the same event is not, however, to experience it identically. Kara’s other writings bear witness to anti-Jewish persecution—a sporadic occurrence, but one that loomed over the Jews of medieval Prague and the rest of the Bohemian Lands. His lament over the massacre of Jews in 1389, Et kol ha-tela’ah (All of the suffering), which tells of the death by fire of Jews in their synagogue, where they had sought refuge from a riotous mob, was recited as part of Jewish Prague’s prayer liturgy, and was adopted in commemorative fashion by the Jews of Worms as well.73 Perhaps the most illustrative example of the difficulty of pressing Jewish cultural life into a single frame of reference is Judah Loew b. Bezalel (d. 1609), the famous Maharal of Prague.74 Maharal had a considerable impact upon intellectual developments for Jews in the Bohemian Lands and, indeed, across the continent. His career took him from Nikolsburg in Moravia to Prague and then to Poznań before returning to Prague in 1597, where he remained until the end of his life. He resided in Prague during the city’s mythic “Golden Age” under the rule of the melancholic and eclectic Rudolf II (r. 1576–1612), who made the city his imperial capital.75 His contemporary, David Gans (1541–1613), reports laconically on a meeting between the rabbi and the emperor in 1592 as follows: “Our lord the emperor . . . Rudolf, may his glory be exalted, in the full measure of his graciousness and correctness sent for and called upon our master Rabbi Loew ben Bezalel, received him with a welcome and merry expression, and spoke to him face to face as one would to a friend. The nature and quality of their words are mysterious, sealed, and hidden. This took place here in the holy community of Prague on Sunday, the third of Adar 5352 [16 February 1592].”76 An uncompromising intellectual, Maharal stringently ruled on laws separating Jews and Christians and adopted a polemical tone in some of his writings that distinguish between the ontological status of Christians and Jews. Given his acknowledgment of a radical and essential difference between Jews and Christians, it is all the more remarkable that he displayed no such hostility in the world of lived experience and intellectual exchange. In 1585, when visited by the humanist Jacques Bongars (1554–1612), Maharal not only welcomed the presence of this Christian in the academy he oversaw but directed his students to tutor the guest in the Hebrew language and letters. In an entry in his travel diary, Bongars registered the signature of the Jewish teacher that Maharal had appointed for him, who left his name in the book as a memento of “great deep friendship.”77 Maharal also left his mark on the daily practices of the Jews of the Bohemian Lands. Two separate statutes of the Moravian regional association of Jews explicitly mention their adoption of practices to accord with Maharal’s

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ruling: one to adopt a prayer that he had formulated for recitation on every Monday and Thursday in the synagogue, and another to prohibit Jews from drinking wine that had been produced by non-Jews, threatening violators with disqualification from holding communal office or leading ritual ser vices.78 Maharal’s self-described pupil, David Gans, similarly straddled the worlds of Jewish tradition and new modes of study. Gans collaborated with two nonJewish astronomers who had found a home in Rudolf’s Prague, the renowned Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler, and composed a Hebrew-language work of astronomy entitled Nehmad ve-na’im.79 A Renaissance man, Gans also wrote a work of history, Tsemah David, which at once reveals his fascination with a world beyond Jewish culture and a preservation of the boundaries that separated Jews from other peoples. Written in two parts, the book covers first “world history” and then “Jewish history” as a distinct area of inquiry, and perhaps as a separate destiny.80 The Bohemian Lands furnished Europe’s Jews with a number of important rabbis, many of whom, as already noted, moved between the crown lands and into wider circles both east and west, and who shaped local experience and wider Jewish thought. The responsa collection of Moravia’s seventeenth-century rabbi, Menahem Mendel Krochmal, reveal the questions facing an early modern Moravian rabbi, ranging from matters of family and ritual law to broader questions of governance, constitutionality, and consent in the Jewish communal institutions of Moravia and its va’ad ha-medinah.81 Other rabbis’ activities offered new and important directions in Jewish culture. Some, like Isaiah Horowitz, left a deep impact on the development of kabbalah (Jewish mysticism); others, like Yom-Tov Lipmann Heller, advocated curricular reform and a return to classical sources. Yet others were less well known for the books they authored than for the books they owned: for example, David Oppenheim and his library of 4,500 printed books and 1,000 manuscripts.82 Prague served as a hub for correspondence between scholars and students across confessional divides and gender divisions. In the winter of 1674–75, Johann Christoph Wagenseil (1633–1705), the Hebraist scholar, printer, and professor at the Lutheran University of Altdorf, corresponded with Bella Perlhefter (d. 1709), a Jewish woman residing in Prague whose family had migrated to the city after they were expelled from Vienna along with the rest of the Jewish population. Bella’s husband had been deeply involved in the Sabbatian upheavals of the mid-seventeenth century, and together they had suffered personal tragedy with the death of all seven of their children. An educated woman, Bella collaborated with her husband in the composition of Be’er Sheva (Seven wells), a volume that memorializes their lost children, and she kept up the correspondence with Wagenseil.

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Though a remarkable woman, Bella was not the only one of her kind in terms of education and participation in the predominantly male world of letters. Another noteworthy woman of this period was Rebecca b. Meir Tiktiner (or Tikotin, d. 1605), the author of the first known Yiddish book to be written by a woman, Menekes Rivkah (The nursemaid of Rebecca), a guide for Jewish domestic life, bodily cleanliness, and female piety, which was published posthumously in 1609. Rebecca was also the author of a Simkhes Toyre lid (Song for Simhat Torah), published in the late seventeenth century.83 Other women worked to publish Yiddish texts as well, such as Ayn sheyn mayseh (A fine tale), on the mythic origins of Prague’s Jewish community, which was brought to the press by Rachel Rausnitz and Beila Horowitz in 1689. A still wider market existed for books in the Yiddish vernacular that were designed for consumption by women and unlettered men but were enjoyed by a wider Jewish reading public. This reading public was ser viced by the expansion of Hebrew and Yiddish printing in Prague and Moravia. A 1512 book of prayers published by Gershom ben Solomon Kohen in Prague marks the first known Hebrew book to have been printed north of the Alps (moveable type came to Pilsen in Bohemia in 1476 and was used in Prague for the first time in 1487), and numerous titles soon emerged in the Bohemian Lands.84 Prague was distinguished by the fact that, unlike in most other centers of Hebrew print on the continent, a number of its presses for Hebrew books were owned and operated by Jews, whereas the norm elsewhere was ownership by Christians. Yet even as these presses stood out for their Jewish ownership, the production of books still required technical cooperation across confessional lines. Jewish printers rented the equipment and workshops of Christians. Shared craftsmanship in the making of the book is evident in similar typographical styles and in borders, frames, and illustrations (including the emblem of Prague’s Old Town), whose appearance in books of both Jewish and Christian provenance reveal that the very materials of book production, such as woodblocks, were likely circulated between printing houses across religious lines.85 Hebrew printing in Moravia, on the other hand, was limited to the years 1602–5, with the activities of Isaac of Prostitz, who learned his techniques in Italy and worked for years in Krakow. Thereafter, no Hebrew press operated in Moravia until the mid-eighteenth century.86 Much as the material conditions of publication were shaped by the meeting of Jewish and Christian artisans, the dissemination of books was directed by the encounter between Jewish cultural producers and Christian censors. The advent of the printing press and its potential for wide-scale dissemination of the printed word motivated state and ecclesiastical bodies to oversee the contents of Jewish books. Censorship was the obverse of licensing, without which books might have been banned altogether, but the process of censorship could some-

Figure 3. Coat of arms of the Old Town of Prague, printed in a Jewish Bible, Prague, 1530. © Jewish Museum in Prague.

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times produce conflict and drama.87 In 1560 the Jews of Prague experienced a far-reaching confiscation of their books. David Gans reports: All the holy books that were in the holy community of Prague were confiscated with government permission because they raised slander against us and said that we were praying against them. For this reason, all the prayer books, together with other books, all weighing eighty kikarim [a talmudic unit], were sent to the city of Vienna. Even cantors in synagogues said prayers by memory; all of this lasted until the time when it was announced and revealed to the king that the accusations against us were untruthful. All the books that had been taken were returned. And all this happened in the year 1559.88 A more tolerant censorship regime prevailed from the last third of the sixteenth century until the outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War, with the appearance of a range of Jewish books—with the exception of the Talmud, which was the most heavi ly scrutinized of texts. When Prague’s chief rabbi, Yom-Tov Lipmann Heller, was arrested and put on trial in Vienna in 1629, a primary charge levied against him was that of blasphemy on account of his positive appraisal of the Talmud in his rabbinic commentaries.89 The conditions of Baroque Catholicism in the postwar Habsburg monarchy contributed to a renewed vigilance against Hebrew books. The seventeenth-century alliance between the Habsburg monarchy and the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) in an effort to re-Catholicize the Bohemian Lands was directed first and foremost against non-Catholic Christians, but had important implications for Jewish life as well.90 Following another major set of confiscations and expurgations in the 1670s, surveillance of Jewish books in the final quarter of the seventeenth century rested with the archbishopric, which appointed Hebraists from the Clementinum University, the Jesuit college in the city.91 When the bibliophile David Oppenheim took up the Prague rabbinate at the start of the eighteenth century, he relocated his library to Hanover rather than subject it to the censorship regime in Bohemia. Just over a decade after that, in 1712, a sweeping confiscation of Hebrew books concluded in a dramatic book-burning in the Old Town Square of Prague.92 And when Oppenheim was accused of engagement with the Ottoman Empire to the detriment of the Habsburg monarchy, and questioned in his use of the title “Prince of the Land of Israel,” his printed endorsements of Hebrew books were brought as evidence for the prosecution.93 The emergence of a militant Catholicism in the Bohemian Lands had important ramifications for other aspects of Jewish life as well. As early as 1630, Jewish

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congregations had been compelled to gather while a Jesuit preacher attempted to sway them to conversion. Licenses issued for the baptism of Jews by the Prague archbishopric reveal the limited numerical success of these campaigns, which may, however, have delivered a deeper psychological blow to the Jews of Prague and Bohemia.94 The most sensational episode involving the matter of conversion erupted around the death of the boy convert Simon Abeles in 1694. Young Simon was rumored to have expressed a desire to convert to Catholicism, and his untimely death aroused suspicion that he had been killed by his own family to prevent him from achieving that aim. In the months that followed the discovery of his death, Simon’s father, Lazar, and an alleged accomplice, Löbl Kurtzhandl, were charged with murder, apprehended, and tortured. Lazar Abeles was found hanged in his cell, an apparent suicide, and Kurtzhandl was sentenced to death by being broken on the wheel. Simon was beatified as a martyr to the Catholic faith, and the flames of anti-Jewish hostility were fanned throughout Bohemia.95 The fault lines of cultural conflict in the Bohemian Lands were drawn not only between Jews and Christians. Just as often, Jews sparred with each other over belief and practice. When Jonathan Eybeschütz attempted to collaborate with a Prague Jesuit on a heavily censored version of the Babylonian Talmud, opposition from Jews across Europe was swift in its condemnation of the endeavor and its efforts to block the publication.96 A still more spectacular expression of the diversity of Jewish belief revolved around moments of messianic expectation. Scattered from their ancestral homeland, Jews awaited a messianic return, and included such hopes in their daily prayers. But the appearance of claimants to such a messianic role inspired elation by some and despair by others, especially when those claims failed to materialize. An early instance of messianic promise has left a material trace in Prague. In the early sixteenth century, after the expulsions of the Jews from the Iberian Peninsula beginning in 1492, there was a wave of messianic expectation. These hopes were fueled by a messianic adventurer named David Reubeni and his prophet, Solomon Molkho. After an audience with the Holy Roman Emperor in Regensburg in 1530, Reubeni was sent to a prison in Spain and Molkho was dispatched to Mantua, where he met a grislier fate—burned at the stake for heresy. Molkho’s story did not end there, however. In the early 1540s a wealthy Prague Jew, Aaron Meshullam Horowitz, obtained Molkho’s signature garments and prominently displayed them in the synagogue he patronized. Horowitz’s act of transfer and display was intended to fashion a reliquary for the Horowitz family, to use symbols of culture to shape an aura of power for a family that was a relative newcomer to the city, and perhaps even to attempt to establish Prague’s

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place as a cultural capital that would rival, if not supplant, older sites of Jewish prominence like the city of Regensburg. Cultural production and political power were never separable from each other. Molkho’s relics in Prague were meant as a cultural response both to local politics and to Prague Jewry’s relationship to a wider Jewish world, announcing its role on the map of Ashkenazic Jewry, a translation of centers from west to east.97 Horowitz’s embrace of messianic relics was largely conducted as part of a political contest between elites, but a century later a continent-wide messianic promise swept up many of Bohemia’s ordinary Jewish denizens in its enthusiasm. In the waning months of 1665, news arrived in Central Europe from the distant reaches of the eastern Mediterranean that the messiah had made himself known in Palestine and was marching on the Ottoman capital in Constantinople. His name was Shabbetai Sevi, and he inspired Jews across Europe with the hopes that their exile had come to an end. A Christian report from Moravia states that the Jews of the province grew so excited that Prince Dietrichstein, lord of Nikolsburg, had to intervene to impose law and order. In Prague, Jews greeted the news with mixed approval. A Prague Jew contributed to the excitement with the publication in Amsterdam of a booklet called Ayn shayne naye lid fun Mashiah (A Lovely new song about the Messiah, 1666).98 Addressing itself to “pious Jews—women and children, young and old,” the meandering Yiddish poem told of contemporary affairs in different Jewish communities as they received the news and of the promises that would be kept in the new, redeemed world. One of the Prague presses was responsible for disseminating copies of the writings of Nathan of Gaza, the prophet of the Sabbatian movement. Members of the rabbinic elite, on the other hand, remained steadfast in their disbelief, or at the very least in their suspension of complete acceptance, and communicated their ambivalence to many of Bohemia’s rural communities.99 Whereas the Sabbatian movement ended in disappointment with the conversion of the movement’s leader to Islam in 1666, its promise reverberated for generations to follow, and the Bohemian Lands were a hotbed of Sabbatian sympathizers and anti-Sabbatian heresy-hunters. The Sabbatian controversies first reached a particularly fevered pitch in Prague in 1715, over the suspected Sabbatianism of Nehemiah Hayon. Hayon had authored a book of homilies on the Bible, which he claimed he had completed during a Prague sojourn, and the book bore the endorsements of influential rabbis such as David Oppenheim of Prague, Gabriel Eskeles of Nikolsburg, and Judah Leib of Glogau. When Hayon’s writings came under scrutiny for their covert messianic theology, the rabbis of Central Europe were divided among themselves, and controversy raged. A Sabbatian clash emerged again in Prague in 1725–26, between the pupils of David

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Oppenheim and Jonathan Eybeschütz, who found themselves at odds with each other both in matters of Jewish law and in their approach to Jewish books.100

Experiencing the Everyday: The Spaces of Daily and Ritual Life As Abraham Levie traveled the Bohemian countryside, he remarked on the different spaces in which Jewish life unfolded. In the cities and towns, Jews clustered into quarters, which were the product of a natural affinity between coreligionists, the need for protection, and compulsory restrictions. Following an edict by Emperor Charles VI in 1726, the Jews of Moravia and Bohemia were concentrated into Jewish quarters to remove them from the paths of Christian religious life. This occasionally required population and property transfers between Christians and Jews, indicating that they had been mingled, to a degree, across the towns’ topography beforehand.101 But enclosed spaces offered comfort to Jews as much as they imposed restriction. When the walls of the Prague Jewish Town were destroyed by fire in 1689, the imperial authorities appointed a special commission to oversee rebuilding the walls and to minimize contact between Christians and Jews. An order regarding the wide street between the Altschul and the Church of the Holy Spirit paid careful attention to Christian prayer times, restricted Jewish foot traffic, and even regulated whether or not windows could be open at Christian procession times.102 But Jews also actively worked to restore the walls of their town. A commemorative scroll honoring the primas Samuel Taussig lists the rebuilding of doors and a lock for them as a valorous act, crediting Taussig with a much-desired separation on the part of Jews as well.103 For at least some Jews, urban life was comfortable—perhaps especially because of the security afforded by the ghetto walls—while rural life was isolating and even frightening. A seventeenth-century memoirist recalled the terror of living in the country outside Wotitz (Votice), near Benešov, Central Bohemia, with its attendant lawlessness: “To go with his family into the forest would involve grave danger, for the fact would become known to the inhabitants of the villages, who are mostly wicked men, thieves and murderers, lying in wait for the blood and property of Jews. Even in the cities they love to oppress and rob them in their houses, how much greater then was the danger of their coming to murder us in the forest.”104 Yet many Jews living in the countryside among their Christian neighbors in villages and little towns likely did not perceive their daily living situation as particularly dangerous. The increase in the Jewish presence in the countryside of the Bohemian Lands contradicts the notion of systematic threats and constant persecutions by Christians. Daily interactions most likely

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reflected social boundaries and religious prejudice at the same time as a sense of village community and shared life experiences. A number of spaces structured daily experience within the varying configurations of Jewish habitation. One of the central spaces of early modern Jewish life was the synagogue, which served as a site for communal proceedings and legal hearings as well as for ritual and prayer. During his visit to Nikolsburg in Moravia, Levie noted the presence of two official synagogues, named simply the “Old Synagogue” and the “New Synagogue,” both of which, “as in Prague,” were full of students, many of whom were “foreign,” that is, of Polish origin.105 Prague, the bustling Jewish metropolis, was home to many official synagogues, whose number ranged from nine to eleven, and still more unofficial and unacknowledged private prayer spaces.106 These spaces were occasionally the subject of Christian marvel at the strange languages and melodies emanating from them. In 1592 the English traveler Fynes Moryson commented upon the “divers Ceremonyes” in the houses of worship of Prague’s Golden Age—“the Hussites, the Lutherans, the Papists, and the singular Jesuites”—including his opportunity to enter Jewish synagogues “at the tyme of divine ser vice.” He also remarked on their prayer ser vices: The whole Congregation did singe altogether, each man having imbroidred linnen cast about his shoulders with knotted fringes to the nomber of the Commandements (which I take to be their Philacteryes), so as the Rabby could not be known from the rest, but by his standing at the Alter. Their singing was in a hollow tone, very lowe at the first, but rysing by degrees, and sometymes stretched to flatt roring, and the people in singing answered to the Rabby, and some tymes bowed their heades lowe, shaking their hinder partes, with many ridiculous tones and gestures.107 Both men and women owned seats in the synagogue, but women were generally excluded from the main theater of activity, either behind thick stone walls with only tiny windows for sound to traverse or, in the newer buildings of the seventeenth century, in a separate balcony from which they could view the proceedings below. Access to the proceedings became wider by the start of the seventeenth century, with the publication of prayer books in both Hebrew and Yiddish, the language of the street.108 In the densely packed Jewish Town of Prague, the space of the synagogues offered a larger, visually elegant, domain for Jewish life. The construction of synagogues and the decoration of their interiors also offered canvases against which wealthier Jews could project their symbolic importance within the community.

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During his time in Prague, Levie observed eight grand synagogues and noted that “in these synagogues one sees beautiful marble decorations, engraved woodworking, and the most beautiful bordered work one has seen in all his days.”109 These communal spaces were patronized by Court Jews like Mordecai Maisel and Jacob Bassevi, who also adorned their interiors with ritual objects such as curtains to cover the ark that housed the Torah scrolls.110 Women, too, asserted their presence in the central spaces of synagogues by donating ritual objects and textiles that inscribed their names and legacies into the daily liturgical rituals.111 Synagogues were not always formally built or officially sanctioned. Larger communities in the Bohemian countryside, for example, had stone or wooden synagogues, which are documented, but smaller communities probably did not have any, at least not in the beginning. Instead they created makeshift prayer spaces in private Jewish houses or rented spaces from Christian neighbors. In Böhmisch Leipa, a 1699 report to the noble administration described, with some disparagement, how such developments unfolded: 1. When Jews initially crept into the town of Leipa, they lived among and rented from the burghers, as can still be seen in the Jewish words engraved in these houses . . . . Later they bought houses in the suburb here and there . . . . 2. The Jews never had a par ticu lar school or a stone-built synagogue here, but held their ser vice in different places. For example, for some time they used Christoph Proches’s attic, to which the Jew Mändel can still testify. . . . When they increased in number and the said attic became too small for them, they rented the stable of the Leipa Burgher Valtin Proches and did their shouting [Geschrey, derogative for ser vice] there. About the year 1657 or 1658, some years before the agreement with the merciful authority in 1660, they had a wooden house built in a deserted area close to the Goldtberg garden and they still live in this little house and hold their ceremony there.112 In Frauenberg in southern Bohemia we have evidence of a prayer room in a private house in which the protected Jew Adam Kauder and his family lived together with several other Jewish couples who were called his “servants” (Knechte), and therefore probably were his employees. A sketch of the house from 1701 shows two adjacent prayer rooms located on the second floor of the building, which may have served as a communal area for the household.113 The absence of permanent prayer spaces also reflects a reality of ritual life: some Jewish men and women lived as the only Jewish family in a village, coming together with others only on rare occasions for ritual need, such as High

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Holiday prayers, rather than the prescribed weekly and daily ser vices.114 In 1708 the chief rabbi of Prague and Bohemia, David Oppenheim, received a letter with a question that reflects the ritual accommodations of rural life. The letter-writer belonged to a family that lived largely in isolation from other Jews. On the High Holidays, however, they would leave their village and travel to join other Jews in a nearby settlement, so that they might together form a minyan (a quorum of ten Jewish men) as prescribed by Jewish law for prayer. The gathering was still so small, however, that most were members of a single nuclear family. Given a further Jewish practice that prohibits a father and son from immediately following each other when being called to read from the Torah, how then might this tiny community of family members fulfill its ritual duties? The question itself reveals a number of aspects of rural life in Bohemia. First, that settlement patterns presented certain obstacles to even the most basic form of communal ritual life dictated by Jewish law. Second, that Jews devised means to overcome those obstacles, even as they opted to maintain their dispersed settlement patterns at the expense of some aspects of normative religious observance. But finally, the exchange between the rural Jew and the chief rabbi who resided in Prague reveals the contacts that obtained between periphery and center, a means by which Jews distant from rabbinic leadership could seek out and obtain advice for their ritual needs, and that even those who appeared isolated had recourse to guidance and support.115 Synagogue spaces were not limited to prayer ser vices. They often operated as locations for schooling for young men and spaces for other communal affairs. In his memoirs, Pinhas Katzenellenbogen reported that in 1709, when Prague’s two chief rabbis stood in a competitive relationship with each other, one rabbi drew enough students to his lectures to fill the yard outside the Pinkas Synagogue, whereas the other would deliver his classes in the “small synagogue that was beside the larger synagogue called the Kloyz-shul.”116 In addition to the officially tolerated synagogue buildings, domestic spaces doubled as locations for prayer and study, blurring the boundaries between public and private within the cramped quarter. The seventeenth-century rabbi Yom-Tov Lipmann Heller proudly designated space in his large home where “study partners sat, and day and night their mouths never left off from learning.”117 Synagogues also housed the ad hoc spaces of Jewish self-government and were sites of public assembly. One of the centerpieces of Jews’ corporate autonomy was their privilege to administer their own legal affairs. Synagogues could be the sites in which Jewish elders deliberated and formulated regulations for the community, and were often where those regulations were archived and stored. The Moravian statutes assumed that when deliberations on electoral matters were to take place, a local synagogue would serve as the appropriate site

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for convening.118 Noble lords similarly made use of synagogues as spaces in which to publicize new ordinances that affected their Jewish residents.119 It was to the synagogue that Jews were brought to swear an oath in a mixture of Hebrew, Yiddish, and German—“before the open holy ark” that housed the Torah scrolls— regarding their faithful remittance of taxes, such as the perdon tax (a form of sales tax).120 Conversely, members of the community who incurred excessive debts or violated regulations could be barred from entering a synagogue, effectively shunned from a central institution of Jewish public life.121 The synagogue could also serve as a site of legal confrontation and mediation. The eighteenth-century High Synagogue (Hochsynagoge) in Prague, for example, was part of the Jewish Town Hall (Rathaus), which had rooms on the ground floor that served as the “Gröschel Beit Din,” where smaller legal claims within the Jewish community were settled. Appeals and severe legal cases (brought both by city dwellers and residents of the countryside) would be heard by the rabbi in his capacity as chief justice (av bet din).122 Jewish legal activity did not remain confined to the spaces of Jewish quarters, however. In seeking favorable rulings both against fellow Jews and in disputes with Christians, Jews frequently took their cases to municipal, regional, and imperial courts, often to the chagrin of their own Jewish leadership.123 At times, synagogue spaces could abut other sites of communal significance, especially cemeteries. The proximity of these hallowed spaces that marked the boundaries between the living and the dead could at times pose ritual problems. In 1693, when the Jews of Lundenburg (Břeclav), in southern Moravia, renovated the rickety walls of their synagogue, they discovered human remains and the traces of a burial ground, some of which had been built into the very foundations of the ancient synagogue. The residents were hard pressed to identify whether these bones were the remains of their coreligionists or nonJewish casualties of the Swedish invasion in the middle of the Thirty Years’ War. In coming to a decision over how best to proceed, a rabbi presented with the case weighed considerations among the demands of limited space, the sanctity of burial grounds, and concerns over ritual impurity and the presence of evil spirits.124 Cemeteries were more than just sites to bury the dead, and where questions about rituals arose. They forged a connection between a community’s daily life and its historical memory, an impor tant ingredient in its collective identity as rooted in place, even in the face of disruption. Jewish medieval tombstones have been preserved only in few places, and those of the sixteenth century are rare due to the recurring expulsions and destruction of communities before the Thirty Years’ War. Prague, Eger, Brünn (Brno), and Znaim (Znojmo) have probably the oldest documented medieval tombstones and reflect the urban

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character of medieval Jewish settlements in the Bohemian Lands.125 The earliest tombstone evidence of rural Jewish cemeteries comes from sixteenthcentury Brandeis, Jungbunzlau, Libochowitz, and Eibenschütz (Ivančice).126 In Prague the Jewish cemetery occupied the largest single space of the ghetto, and was present in daily life and living memory. Members of the Jewish community entered the cemetery at appointed times during the calendrical cycle, on the fast day of Tish’ah be-Av and on the eve of the High Holidays, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. The cemetery’s link to the past permeated the synagogue when special memorial texts called hazkarot were produced for recitation there to weave the memory of the dead into the consciousness of the living, providing them with paradigms of piety, modesty, respectability, and other elements of good conduct.127 Such bridges between the dead and the living were inscribed in the very materials of cemetery monuments, and similarly served to establish memory of the past and to direct conduct in the present. Inscriptions on stones, sometimes quite lengthy, could evoke memories of steadfastness when faced with persecution, and of dedication to Jewish values like the love and study of the Torah for men and modesty and charity for women.128 Architectural designs of tombstones reflect regional Jewish fashions but also intercultural exchanges between Christians and Jews. While certain symbols like crowns, grapes, and the Magen David were common tombstone ornaments among Jewish communities throughout Europe, rural Jewish cemeteries in the Bohemian Lands also included distinct local traditional folk art like flower vases, eight-pointed stars, hearts, spirals, and other ornaments. This, in addition to the use of certain stones, like sandstone in North Bohemia or white marble in East Bohemia, speaks to a distinct regional fashion and aesthetic culture that combined Jewish and non-Jewish influences.129 Jewish burial societies bridged the worlds of the living and the dead, and were often among the most prestigious of communal organizations, drafting their own sets of ordinances and manuals for collective conduct.130 The burial society was only one of several communal confraternities that oversaw aspects of welfare and life-cycle commemoration, such as a society that provided for ritual circumcision for the newborn sons of poor families, a society that cared for the elderly, a society to recite prayers for the dead, a society to provide clothing for the indigent, and a society to study the Mishnah for the spiritual sustenance of the wider community. Moravia’s mid-seventeenth-century statutes similarly ordered communities to provide for the needy, as in an ordinance establishing a dowry fund for the families of poor young women.131 The gendered dimensions of communal ser vices were apparent in other domains of Jewish ritual life, especially with respect to female menstrual purity. Jewish law called for married women to immerse themselves in water following

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their monthly cycle, before renewing sexual contact with their spouses. Communal resources were allocated to ensure that ritual baths were available for this practice, and also to assert control over the process of even the most private matters.132 In Prague there were probably at least four ritual baths available, all connected to different synagogues.133 Jews living in Böhmisch Leipa in the midseventeenth century had a mikveh in the small wooden house they used for their prayers. A 1699 report states: “In the basement they had a basin [Tauche, women’s bath] and have used it until this very day.”134 If no ritual baths in buildings were available, however, rivers, lakes, and ponds were acceptable alternatives, even though they could lack discrete spaces for the women to enter and could also be dangerous in European winter temperatures. Another central challenge to the maintenance of Jewish domestic life was the availability of kosher meat. In locales that had a synagogue, a slaughtering place sometimes could be found in a backyard or behind the synagogue. The rural Bohemian community of Lokschan (Březnice), for example, had such an arrangement.135 It also maintained a communal kosher kitchen—a common establishment in Jewish settlements along frequented trade routes—which would serve Jewish and non-Jewish travelers and market visitors who stayed overnight. It could also serve the community on Shabbat in order to keep previously prepared food warm.136 Communal employees likely often combined several occupations within the community, such as rabbi and shohet (ritual slaughterer) or shammash (community employee) and shohet, as was also done in German rural communities.137 Other ritual necessities, like the establishment of an eruv, a demarcated communal space that would allow for the carry ing of objects on the Sabbath, were improvised as well. In Brandeis an der Elbe (Brandýs nad Labem), for example, Jewish homeowners strung wire around their homes, a common practice by Jewish communities to create a temporary space to accommodate religious needs.138 Even in sites where walled quarters and separate cultural zones encouraged segregation, Jews and Christians interacted—in modes of both coexistence and conflict—in various sites of engagement. This began with the city skyline. From within the walls of Prague’s Jewish Town, churches could be seen towering against the horizon. The Týn Church, which faces the Old Town Square, and a large Marian column, which stood in the center of the square, were both high enough to be visible from many parts of the Jewish ghetto, and they bore the message, both implicit and explicit, of Catholic supremacy.139 The same also held for the large complex of the Clementinum, the Jesuit college and the archbishop’s seminary, which oversaw conversions to Catholicism and the censorship of books, including Hebrew ones. Located in the heart of the city and near

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the entrance to Charles Bridge, this forbidding edifice was a dominant feature of the confessional city in the decades after the Thirty Years’ War. Other spaces offered ordinary Christians and Jews opportunity to meet, converse, or even brawl. Inns and taverns, in particular, could be sites of both conviviality and inebriated conflict. Abraham Levie experienced such an encounter when he met a soldier in a tavern in the Bohemian countryside. When the soldier drank Levie’s beer, the two nearly came to blows, and Levie fled the scene and spent the night in hiding in a nearby barn to avoid bodily harm, finding refuge in the hospitality of a local peasant against the hostility of a belligerent soldier.140 The coffeehouse, a newcomer to the early modern urban scene with the penetration of the global commodity of coffee into European local markets, similarly provided a space of conviviality and, occasionally, concern. The rabbis of Prague expressed a range of opinions on the acceptability of Jews frequenting the coffeehouse on the Sabbath, and some missionary-minded Jesuit authors capitalized on the space as a site to market books aimed at luring Jews to Catholicism.141 These sites of sociability may have provided opportunities for leisure and games as well. The Moravian statutes stridently condemned gaming with cards and dice, both of the public and private sort, and threatened violators with fines and public shaming.142 Interactions between Jews and non-Jews also took place in domestic spaces and raised the attention of Jewish lawmakers about the conduct of women. A statute of the Moravian regional association stipulated in the strongest terms that every single community shall exercise great caution [to ensure] that women shall not enter into the homes of the uncircumcised [alone], without a Jewish chaperone, and even more so in the villages, and the rabbi shall supervise this. And where there is no rabbi, the elders will personally supervise, and not look the other way, God forbid, whether over small or great matters. And they shall be obliged to punish [violators] with fines and shaming, and they must make their wickedness known, and publicize this widely, so that it shall be heeded and they shall not purposefully transgress further.143 Another impor tant contact zone was the marketplace. As he passed through Trebitsch (Třebíč), Abraham Levie remarked upon its importance for the great fairs held there four times a year. “In these markets,” he wrote, “one can find no merchants other than Jews . . . and in all of Bohemia and Moravia no other merchants can be found except for Jews—who hold such a great privilege from the

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emperor.”144 The ubiquity of Jews in the markets left a similar impression on him in Brünn (Brno). The importance Jewish merchants had for their Christian neighbors at local and regional markets and fairs is also evident in a petition launched by Bohemian townspeople in the eighteenth-century mining town of Ratibor (Ratibořské Hory), where Jews were not allowed to settle. When the town community requested that Jews be granted permission to re-enter their local markets and fairs, they gave the following reason: 1. Fairs without Jews are very bad, and our communal income that relies only on those fairs is weakened. 2. The lordly rents will suffer as well because not as many people will come as in previous years if the Jews are not allowed to come because they do their most business with them. 3. If a burgher or a miner wants to get anything that he necessarily has to buy from Jews, he will have to walk a mile, sacrifice a full day, miss work, while any other time the Jews would bring all their wares for a good price into the home and also give credit to everybody and often even the miners.145 Testimonies like these confirm the fundamental role of mobile local Jewish merchants and small-scale creditors in Bohemia’s rural economy. At the same time they provide evidence and visibility to the presence of Jewish merchants in rural and semi-urban non-Jewish communities that had excluded them. The proximity of areas of allowed and prohibited Jewish settlement in the Bohemian countryside fostered a mobile economic occupation pattern that served Jewish and non-Jewish communities. Prague’s Jewish market was another important site of interaction both among Jews of disparate locations in the Bohemian Lands and between Jews and Christians, as Jews from the Bohemian hinterland would enter into the city at appointed times to peddle their wares in a flea market (Tandelmarkt). The Tandelmarkt was a site of regular contact between Jews and Christians. Narratives from the eighteenth century reveal the high temperatures of these interactions, as when Hirsch ben Selig Yampels and Jacob ben Mendel Rofe were accused of theft of Christian goods and arrested. Their death sentences were commuted only after Yampels’s wife and Rofe’s mother traveled to Vienna to plead for imperial intervention.146 Precisely on account of these heightened contacts, markets were also a space of intense scrutiny and regulation. In observing the “great freedom” that prevailed among Prague Jews, Levie singled out one particular domain as limiting that freedom: “One encounters the unfreedom of the Jews in several locations in their market, which is called the

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Tandelmarkt, into which one can scarcely venture on account of its restrictions,” naming the par ticular constraints on dress that a Jew faced upon entering the market.147

Collective Memory and Geographic Identity As Levie noted, the Bohemian Lands comprised a diverse array of settlement patterns, which gave rise to different political configurations and cultural environments. At times Jews operated in structures of social and economic integration, and at other times they continued to try and maintain their cultural, religious, and legal distinctiveness. Levie was consciously aware of internal frontiers between the different lands, as he noted Trebitsch was a “boundary city between Bohemia and Moravia.”148 But even as the different regions within the Bohemian Lands produced varied Jewish experiences, the Jews of these lands evinced a sense of belonging to a par ticu lar geographic entity that was distinct even from other regional Jewish cultures. Recognizing themselves as neither “Ashkenaz” (the German lands) nor “Polin” (the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth), the Jews of “the lands between,” as the historian Hillel Kieval has dubbed them, preserved a sense of regional identification.149 Such a distinction is evident in a brief Yiddish poem published in Prague in the last quarter of the seventeenth century, which includes a fictional dialogue between a western and an eastern Jew. Called Di bashraybung fun Ashkenaz un Polak, the satirical text in rhymed prose alternates between the perspective of a Jew from the German lands regarding his Polish counterparts and vice versa, poking fun at each in turn. Where the German ridiculed the meager living conditions of the Poles, the Pole pointed to the cultural supremacy of the east in the face of the base materialism of the Germans. In the concluding stanzas of the poem, however, the two disputants are joined by a third voice. The latecomer is a “Prager,” who prides himself on his practical street smarts, uses cunning to finagle things from out-of-towners, and lives a life of good fortune with God’s blessings. In this playful literary imagining, it is clear that the Prague Jews belong neither to the east (Polin) nor the west (Ashkenaz), but are expected to be taken on their own terms, with their own unique cultural stereotypes.150 This distinct regional identity was reflected in the publication and marketing of rituals as well. Prayer books from the period often advertised that their liturgy was compatible with the customs of “Ashkenaz, Poland, Bohemia . . . .” Such an act of inclusion at once recognized an almost continental scope of association, yet preserved the distinct customs and identification of Bohemian Jews on their own liturgical terms.

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Jews’ sense of their place in history and geography was further reinforced in acts of individual and familial commemoration, such as autobiographies, songs, and private family “Purim” holidays that celebrated a family member’s brush with danger and their miraculous redemption.151 But these were dynamic and changing identities as well. Shifting geographic dimensions could have real political implications for Jewish life. In 1627 Rabbi Yom-Tov Lipmann Heller made a case for his authority over Silesia based on the boundaries of Habsburg sovereignty. He wrote: “For we dwell in the same kingdom and have the same king. Especially now, since letters have come from our emissaries at the royal court [reporting] that the king and our counsellors are making Silesia tributary to us in the payment of taxes, the greatest rabbinical court of the kingdom’s cities is here.”152 For Heller the inclusion of Silesia within the Habsburg crown lands demanded a new orientation of its cities, such as Glogau, toward Prague and away from its Polish neighbors. Political control could thus reshape cultural geography and regional identity, at least aspirationally for some. Even as they asserted their belonging to a locality, Bohemian Jews still marked themselves as different from the wider Christian environment in which they resided, conveying acts of civic belonging in a particularly Jewish way. In 1716 Johann Jacob Schudt (1664–1722), a polemical Christian ethnographer, published a small brochure on a memorable occasion. In Das Frankfurter und Prager Freuden-Fest he translated and commented on a Jewish description of the widely noted procession of the Prague Jewish community in honor of the new imperial baby heir to the Hapsburg throne, Leopold Johann of Austria. The celebrated prince would not survive his first year of life, giving way to the later regency of his younger sister Maria Theresa, who would impose many hardships on the Jewish subjects in her crown lands. In its time, however, the procession was a vivid symbolic display of all the aspirations and achievements, the limitations and liberties, as well as the integration and segregation, which Jews had experienced in their centuries-long history in the Bohemian Lands. Schudt quotes from a Yiddish report (Naye Tsaytung) that described a dazzling array of Jewish identity on display mixed with carnivalesque elements that apparently left the Christian Prague audience in awe. Community leaders dressed like nobles, the chief rabbi holding a whip and hourglass to show his disciplining role, groups of singing yeshiva students and community members posing as hussars, and Jewish artisans in differently colored garbs were only some of the actors who turned the Jewish Town into a spectacle153—a spectacle that manifested high Jewish self-esteem, urban identity, proficiency in early modern cultural and political status expression, and historical consciousness.154 Even their expressions of civic belonging and dynastic alliance reflected the

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Figure 4. Procession of the Prague Jewish community to mark the birth of the heir to the imperial throne, Leopold Johann of Austria, in 1716. © State and City Library, Augsburg.

precariousness of royal and noble privilege, along with the conviction that this was the Jews’ rightful diasporic home. The procession captured the oftencontradictory elements of Jewish life in the Bohemian Lands. And Jews experienced these lands differently, depending on whether they had settled in large cities, middling towns, or sparsely populated villages, and devised systems of collective self-governance that not only regulated daily life but also revealed the fissures in such idealized regulations.

C h apter 2

Absolutism and Control: Jews in the Bohemian Lands in the Eighteenth Century Michael L. Miller

On January 27, 1782 (12 Shevat 5542), Ezekiel Landau, the chief rabbi of Prague, addressed a responsum to David ben Mendel, a former student of his who lived in Tutschap (Tučapy), a small village in southern Bohemia between Tabor (Tábor) and Budweis (České Budějovice). At the time there were roughly forty Jewish men who possessed the right to reside and get married in Tutschap. A few weeks earlier, David’s father, Mendel, had sent a letter to Landau, inquiring about the nature of this right, and about the laws governing its transfer or bequest to another person. “He asked me about the ‘familia’ that obtains in this province, that is, the laws regulating the number of Jewish householders who are permitted to reside in a particular town,” Landau wrote to his former student. “Each first-born son has this right, and it is customary for one [Jew] to sell it to another Jew . . . and your father asked me whether this [right] is considered moveable property [metaltelim] or immoveable property [karka’] according to Jewish law.”1 Mendel’s question pertained to one of the most coveted “possessions” in the Bohemian Lands, at least among Jewish men, during the 122 years (1726–1848) when the Familiants Laws (Familiantengesetze) were in effect. Promulgated in Bohemia in 1726 and in Moravia and Silesia a year later, the Familiants Laws limited the number of Jewish men who were permitted to reside and marry in these hereditary Habsburg lands.2 Men who already had children at the time were considered “heads of families,” and they received a Familiants number (Familiantennummer), which could then be inherited by the first-born son after the father’s death. Thereafter, only the first-born son—or anyone else who managed to acquire a Familiants number—had the right to marry. Mendel wanted

Map 3. Central Europe circa 1750.

In order to trace key demographic changes in Jewish settlement in the Bohemian Lands, the same twenty-three Jewish communities are shown on the maps throughout this book. The percentage indicates the size of each Jewish community in relation to the total number of Jews in the Bohemian Lands in the period represented. An “x” indicates that no Jewish community existed in that location at the time. For further information on these Jewish communities, see the supplementary essay by Helena Klímová and Lenka Matušíková.

Map 4. Jewish Population of the Bohemian Lands circa 1750 (approx. 53,000).

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Figure 5. Procession of the Prague Jewish community to mark the birth of the heir to the imperial throne, Joseph (later, Emperor Joseph II), in 1741. © Jewish Museum in Prague.

to find out whether this right was considered moveable or immoveable property, a crucial legal distinction when it comes to sale, inheritance, or debt collection. Landau concluded that, according to Jewish law, it was neither, because “it does not physically exist,” and therefore cannot even be considered property. At the same time he recognized that, according to civil law (dina de-malkhuta), a Familiants number constituted a form of property, and in practice, it had become customary for the Jews of the Bohemian Lands to view it this way as well. It is only fitting that Landau’s responsum, written just over a year after Empress Maria Theresa’s death, dealt with the encroachment of state law into the daily lives of the Jews in the Bohemian Lands. The rabbinic precept of dina de-malkhuta dina (“the law of the state is the law”) had long acknowledged the authority of a legitimate monarch to impose taxes and enact laws for the general welfare, but as a rule, Habsburg monarchs rarely interfered in the religious, educational, and communal affairs of their Jewish subjects.3 Every thing changed, however, in the eighteenth century, when a succession of Habsburg

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rulers— Charles VI, Maria Theresa, and Joseph II—started to intervene in internal Jewish matters on an unprecedented scale. This was part of a larger effort by Charles VI and his successors to centralize power and exert direct control over the disparate peoples and lands of the Habsburg monarchy, often at the expense of the nobility and Catholic clergy.4 Landau distinguished between two kinds of gentile rulers. One was “evil by nature, cruel and hateful toward his subjects . . . and his sole intention was to degrade the Jewish people, torment them and embitter their lives”; the other was “merciful” toward his subjects, taxed them “justly and fairly,” and derived great pleasure from their worldly successes. In biblical times Pharaoh embodied the evil ruler and Cyrus and Darius embodied the merciful ruler, but these figures naturally had their counterparts in Landau’s day as well. In a sermon delivered in Prague on March 23, 1782 (8 Nissan 5542), on the Sabbath before Passover, Landau likened Emperor Joseph II to Cyrus and Darius. “Now, a righteous and compassionate king has arisen,” he said, “and although we still remain bondservants, he has already removed the indignity of bondage.”5 Of course, Landau did not dare to liken any of the Habsburg rulers to Pha raoh, but such a comparison certainly would have fit Joseph II’s grand father and mother. In 1726–27, Charles VI promulgated the Familiants Laws, which were often described as “pharaonic” due to the severity of the decrees and their fixation on first-born sons.6 And in 1744–45 Maria Theresa ordered the expulsion of the Jews from the Bohemian Lands, conjuring up images of the mass exodus from Egypt. By contrast, Joseph II “decided to help our people and raise us from our degradation” (in Landau’s words).7 Charles VI and Maria Theresa harnessed the power of the absolutist state in an effort to reduce the number of Jews, whereas Joseph II used its power to ameliorate the Jews’ civil status and turn them into more “productive” inhabitants of his domains.

Jews and the State: Population Control In the first half of the eighteenth century, the Habsburg crown aimed to control the Jewish population in the Bohemian Lands and limit contacts between Christians and Jews. These interrelated goals can be understood against the backdrop of the Thirty Years’ War (1618–48), a watershed in European history, which radically altered the demographic composition of the Bohemian Lands and greatly strengthened the position of the Catholic Church in the Habsburg Empire. “Perhaps altogether the major conflict in Eu ropean history between the Crusades and the Napoleonic Wars,” the Thirty Years’ War started off as a “domestic conflict” in Prague but eventually plunged the continent into a prolonged and bloody struggle that, by some estimates, reduced Central Europe’s

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population by 15 to 20 percent.8 In the Bohemian Lands the hostilities reached a “bloody denouement” with the defeat of the largely Protestant nobility at the Battle of White Mountain in 1620, after which Emperor Ferdinand II undertook a process of re-Catholicization that entailed executing rebels, confiscating noble manors, expelling Protestants, and abolishing many of the rights previously enjoyed by the towns and the nobility.9 As a result the general population in the Bohemian Lands dramatically plummeted. Prague’s population fell from as high as 70,000 in 1600 to a possible low of 26,000 in 1650; in Olmütz (Olomouc), the population declined from 10,000 to 2,000, and in Prossnitz (Prostějov) from 5,000 to 3,000.10 Meanwhile, the Jewish population in the Bohemian Lands experienced significant growth, owing to a combination of natural reproduction and immigration from neighboring lands. The Jewish communities in the Bohemian Lands absorbed two large waves of refugees, first in the wake of the Khmelnitsky massacres that ravaged Poland-Lithuania in 1648–49, then again following the expulsion of Jews from Vienna and Lower Austria in 1670. In both cases refugees and expellees were more likely to settle in Moravia than in Bohemia, not only because this Habsburg province was closer to both the Polish and Lower Austrian borders but also because many of the refugees and expellees had family connections in Moravia.11 As the historian David Kaufmann noted, many Viennese Jews had originally come from Moravia, and “when the expellees sought out the towns from whence their families had come, it was simply a return to the source.”12 The frequency of names such as Wiener and Pollak among the Jews of Bohemia and Moravia are a testament to the seventeenth-century disruptions that altered the demography of the Bohemian Lands. Following the Thirty Years’ War, the Habsburg crown introduced concrete policies aimed at reducing the number of Jews in the Bohemian Lands. The crown experimented with different policies: first, selective expulsion under Ferdinand III and Leopold I; then, marriage restrictions under Charles VI; and finally, mass expulsion under Maria Theresa. The policies reflected the shifting, and often competing, interests of the nobility, the burghers, and the Catholic clergy vis-à-vis the Jewish population. In 1650 Ferdinand III sought to expel Jews from localities where they had not legally resided prior to 1618, not only to satisfy the demands of the burghers, who saw Jews as inveterate competitors, but also to reassert the crown’s authority over the landed nobility.13 Landowners like the Dietrichsteins and Lichtensteins in Moravia reaped economic benefits from the Jews living on their estates, and they did their utmost to protect them from expulsions. Indeed, the noble-dominated Moravian Diet prevailed upon Ferdinand to delay the implementation of his 1650 decree, and then, three decades

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later, it convinced his son and successor, Leopold I, to move the cut-off date from 1618 to 1657. The crown’s efforts to reduce Jewish “overpopulation” focused particular attention on Prague, where Jews constituted more than a third of the city’s total population at the beginning of the eighteenth century.14 Bowing to pressure from the city’s burghers and clergymen, the crown appointed various “reduction commissions” to come up with ideas for limiting the number, influence, and visibility of Prague’s Jews. A reduction commission in 1714–15 proposed certain measures, such as population caps and marriage quotas, which were eventually incorporated into the Familiants Laws that Charles VI promulgated a decade later for the Bohemian Lands as a whole. Indeed, the commission even proposed Familiants “numbers” (like the one in Ezekiel Landau’s responsum) to be passed down from father to son.15 There was also a spatial dimension to these reduction plans, which aimed to scale back and contain the physical presence of Jews, often on moral or theological grounds. The Catholic Church increasingly portrayed Jews as a threat to the Christian body politic and sought to reduce social contact between Christians and Jews to a bare minimum, primarily by means of residential segregation. In Prague, where Jews were already confined to a separate residential quarter, one of the “reduction commissions” even recommended walling up windows and doors of houses on the perimeter of the Jewish Town, because they faced Christian houses.16 In Moravia an official complained about Jews who lived so close to Christian churches that they could “look inside the church, see the priest on the pulpit and observe the divine ser vice.” This, he warned “leads to tremendous blasphemy.”17 In Bohemia and Moravia, Catholic clergy inveighed against “friendly relations” between Christian and Jewish neighbors, but it seems that spatial proximity was more likely to breed animosity than mutual respect.18 Jewish “encroachment” on Christian space was, of course, a function of Jewish population growth, and Charles VI addressed these interrelated problems in 1726–27, with a series of back-to-back decrees that aimed to control both biological procreation and spatial intermingling. The first of these, the “pharaonic” Familiants Laws of 1726–27, capped the number of Jewish family heads in the Bohemian Lands at 13,676 (8,451 for Bohemia, 5,106 for Moravia and 119 for Silesia) and assigned each family head (Familiant) a designated number that allowed him—and his first-born son—to marry and establish a family. The second set of decrees, the Separation Laws of 1727, ordered residential segregation— or “ghettoization”—in towns and villages where there were already-existing Jewish communities. The stated aim of the Separation Laws was religious—to

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allow “the unhampered observance of the divine religion” by insuring that no Jewish house was in view of a church, along a procession route, or in the middle of the Christian population—but there were also economic motives.19 Christian merchants and artisans hoped to push their Jewish competitors out of the town centers, and in many cases, they got their wish. In Moravia the newly established—or newly consolidated—Jewish quarters were often on the periphery of town, at a distance not only from the church but also from the central market place. The demarcation of a determinate Jewish space, whether in Moravian towns or in the Bohemian capital, reinforced the widespread perception that the Jewish inhabitants constituted an existential threat that needed to be curbed or contained. Not until the reign of Maria Theresa, however, were Jews treated as a threat that needed to be banished completely from the Bohemian Lands. To be sure, Jews had been expelled from most of the royal free towns in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and Ferdinand I expelled Prague’s Jews on two occasions, first in 1541, then again in 1557, but when Maria Theresa assumed the throne in 1740, few expected her to take such a drastic, punitive measure. Indeed, almost two centuries had passed since the last expulsions, and as François Guesnet has noted, it was no longer “common currency” to threaten a Jewish community with complete expulsion.20 On December 18, 1744, twenty-seven-year-old Maria Theresa ordered the expulsion of the Jews from Prague, the first step in her planned expulsion of the Jews from all of Bohemia and Moravia.21 Maria Theresa was an inveterate Judeophobe who viewed the Jews not only as a pathological threat—“I know of no greater plague than this race,” she once wrote—but also as a security threat. Her decision to expel the Jews was motivated by rumors of Jewish collaboration with the Prussian occupiers of Prague in 1744, during the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–1748), a prolonged and concerted military assault against Maria Theresa’s right to succeed her father, Charles VI, as Habsburg monarch. Determined to rid her lands of Jews, Maria Theresa stubbornly disregarded the advice of her counselors, who opposed the decree on economic and humanitarian grounds. She was not deterred by the argument that Jewish and Christian economic spheres were too intertwined, nor by the fact that banishing so many thousands of Jews in the dead of winter would inevitably cause many deaths.22 It was an “exceptionally long and hard” winter, observed the rector of Charles University, who witnessed the “terrible sight” of the expulsion in January and February 1745. “In the closing days of February, in the bitter cold and deep snow,” he wrote, “thousands of homeless Jews roamed the villages and small towns on the outskirts of Prague and in the outlying countryside trying to find some shelter . . . from the rigors of the weather in stables,

Figure 6. Map showing the segregation of the Jewish and Christian inhabitants of Jamnitz (Jemnice), Moravia, 1727. © Jewish Museum in Prague.

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barns and attics.”23 In the end as many as 15,000 Jews went into exile, many of them finding temporary refuge in Lieben (Libeň), Brandeis (Brandýs nad Labem), and other villages and towns outside of Prague.24 The expulsion of Prague Jewry has received considerable scholarly attention, in part because of the enormity of the events, but even more so because of the successful European-wide lobbying effort that eventually led Maria Theresa to repeal the decree and readmit Jews to Prague in 1748. As soon as the decree was announced, court Jews in Central Europe used their extensive network to mobilize kings, princes, electors, clergymen, merchant guilds, and members of Maria Theresa’s family—including her husband, mother-in-law, grandmother, and royal tutor—to intervene on behalf of Prague Jewry. They made their appeals primarily on humanitarian grounds, but as Wolf Wertheimer, son of an influential Jew at the Viennese imperial court, observed, many of the non-Jews acted “only in their own interest, not in favor of the children of our nation.”25 And when Maria Theresa finally suspended her decree in 1748, it was not because her heart suddenly warmed toward the Jews. It was because the Bohemian estates gave her an ultimatum. They agreed to the introduction of a new system of centralized taxation on condition that Maria Theresa repeal the expulsion decree. Maria Theresa agreed to suspend the decree for ten years, but only after demanding an extortionate “toleration tax,” to be paid collectively by all the Jewish communities in Bohemia and Moravia.26 Although suspended, and for all intents and purposes repealed, Maria Theresa’s expulsion decree exemplified the growing tendency of the absolutist monarch to interfere in the internal affairs of her subjects. Her administrative reforms, which aimed to centralize state power, encroached upon religious, educational, and communal affairs, irrespective of confession. In the case of the Jews of the Bohemian Lands, these affairs had traditionally been overseen and regulated by institutions of self-government: the kehillah at the local level and the Moravian Council of the Land or the Bohemian Landesjudenschaft at the supra-communal level. Under Maria Theresa, however, the Moravian Council of the Land was dissolved—it was convened for the last time in 1748; and the office of the Bohemian chief rabbinate, which stood atop the Bohemian Landesjudenschaft, was eliminated in 1749.27 The Moravian-Silesian chief rabbinate remained in place, and the Prague chief rabbinate was reinstated after the expulsion, but these offices were increasingly regulated and circumscribed by the expanding absolutist state, especially during the reign of Joseph II, Maria Theresa’s son, co-regent, and successor. In Moravia the Shai Takkanot (“311 Statutes”) also remained in place, but in a different form. As part of her broader effort to codify the disparate laws of her empire, Maria Theresa ordered a German translation of Moravian Jewry’s “constitution,” which served as the basis for

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the General Regulations for the Administrative, Judicial and Commercial Affairs of the Jewry in the Margraviate of Moravia, which was published in 1754.28 In addition to regulations about hiring rabbis, supporting yeshivas, and electing communal officials, this legal code also adumbrated the matrimonial and residential restrictions that had been imposed by Charles VI. Article 16, for example, stated that anyone who married illegally would be subject to monetary fines, public flogging, and expulsion from the land.29

The Familiants Laws in Practice The Familiants Laws were a defining feature of Jewish life in the Bohemian Lands for more than 120 years, from their promulgation in 1726–27 until their final repeal during the Revolution of 1848. Referred to in Hebrew as an “evil decree” (gezerah), the Familiants Laws wreaked havoc on community life, tore apart families, reinforced social hierarchies, punished biological urges, and impelled many male Jews to emigrate, especially to neighboring Hungary. The one thing the Familiants Laws did not do was reduce the Jewish population in the Bohemian Lands. According to official censuses, the Jewish population in Moravia (including Silesia) nearly doubled from just over 20,000 in 1754 to just under 40,000 in 1848. During the same period, the Jewish population in Bohemia increased even faster, by roughly 250 percent, from more than 29,000 in 1754 to more than 75,000 in 1848. These were certainly not the results desired by Charles VI and his successors, least of all by Maria Theresa. Recently, Jana Vobecká, a historical demographer, has sought to understand how such rapid growth in Bohemia was even possible, given the existence of the Familiants Laws. She offers two possible explanations. The first is that the census data are correct, demonstrating that the Familiants Laws were successfully circumvented. The second is that the earlier population counts were underestimated more than the later population counts, “giving the false impression that growth was so dramatic.”30 In neither case, however, does her analysis explain why Jewish population growth was faster in Bohemia than in Moravia. In all likelihood this was because the Familiants Laws were enforced more strictly in Moravia than in Bohemia, prompting many more second-, third-, and fourth-born Moravian Jewish sons—who had little chance of getting a Familiants number—to leave their native land.31 The Familiants Laws created a fairly rigid hierarchy within many Jewish communities, and even within individual Jewish families.32 At the top of the pyramid were Familiants and their first-born sons, followed by an even smaller number of “supernumeraries.” These “supernumeraries” received permission to marry, but they could not pass this privilege on to their sons. Next came the “later-born sons,” that is the second-, third-, and fourth-born sons of Familiants

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who were forbidden to marry but could still apply for a Familiants number if one became available, for example, upon the death of a Familiant with no male heirs. At the bottom of the pyramid were the illegitimate sons—males born out of wedlock or to couples whose marriages were not recognized by the state. They were not even eligible to apply for vacant Familiants numbers. Naturally, women also felt the brunt of the Familiants Laws. Women with large dowries were in high demand, in part because it cost “a minor fortune” to get a marriage license.33 “How much money [the Jews] spend to obtain [permission for] marriage,” a Catholic priest wrote in 1745, after spending much of his career in Unter Zerekwe (Dolní Cerekev), a small village in Bohemia, not far from the Moravian border.34 (Much of the cost was in the form of bribes.) Many women remained single, in part because of poverty, in part because so many “later-born” sons emigrated abroad, depleting the pool of eligible husbands. Single women did not really have the option of leaving the Bohemian Lands and striking out on their own, so they tended to remain in their parents’ home, or in many cases they found work as domestic servants in order to eke out a meager existence.35 Some married or cohabited illegally, but this came at a price for them and their children, who were considered illegitimate and were therefore ineligible to apply for a Familiants number of their own. Over time the number of illegitimate births increased exponentially, raising great concern among state officials and community leaders about the negative moral and legal consequences of this demographic trend. In 1845 almost a quarter of the Jews in Eiwanowitz (Ivanovice na Hané), a medium-sized Moravian community, were considered illegitimate, and, as the community leadership noted, many of them were “the grandchildren of those persons who lived in such forbidden relationships.”36 The following year a Viennese official observed that the number of Jewish Familiants in Moravia was “too small in relation to the current actual Jewish population in this province,” leading couples to cohabit illegally and causing “adverse legal consequences for their children.”37 As long as men and women satisfied their natural biological urges, the problem was self-perpetuating. While some “illegitimate” and “later-born” sons opted for celibacy or conversion, many of them chose emigration, especially to Hungary, which one scholar has called “the El Dorado of Bohemian and Moravian Jews.”38 They were drawn by economic opportunity but also by Hungary’s close proximity. Moravian Jews, in particular, settled in northern Hungary (today’s Slovakia), so the emigration experience did not necessarily entail severing ties with one’s native community. In fact, many emigrants (and their offspring) preserved religious and commercial ties with their families in the Bohemian Lands well into the nineteenth century, and they sometimes even paid taxes to their former

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Jewish communities. They sent their sons to celebrated yeshivas in Nikolsburg (Mikulov), Prossnitz, and Prague; and they turned to Moravia, and to a lesser extent, Bohemia, when looking to fill rabbinic posts. At the end of the eighteenth century, most Hungarian rabbis were of Moravian origin.39 The impact of the Familiants Laws may have also been felt in the religious sphere.40 Scholars have tried to explain why Hasidism, the popu lar mystical movement that originated in Podolia in the mid-eighteenth century, never made serious inroads in the Bohemian Lands. One explanation for the success of Hasidism in Eastern Europe was the rapid Jewish population growth in the PolishLithuanian commonwealth, and the concomitant increase in the proportion of young people who were among Hasidism’s most ardent followers. While Jews in Poland-Lithuania were experiencing a population explosion, however, the Jews of the Bohemian Lands were feeling the pressure of the recently promulgated Familiants Laws. Young Jewish men, who were most affected by the marriage restrictions, often chose to emigrate, thereby shrinking the size of the demographic group that was most likely to seek solace, hope, or rebellion in the Hasidic movement. A century earlier, it was this age cohort that had embraced Sabbatianism, another popular mystical movement, which found a firm foothold in the Bohemian Lands in the late seventeenth and well into the eighteenth century.

Sabbatianism and Frankism The Bohemian Lands deserve a special place in the history of Sabbatianism, the Jewish messianic movement that captivated the Jewish world in the seventeenth century. It is hardly surprising that thousands, or tens of thousands, of Bohemian and Moravian Jews were caught up in the frenzy after Shabbetai Sevi (1626–76) declared himself Messiah in 1665. Indeed, as Gershom Scholem has argued, most of the Jewish world believed that Shabbetai Sevi was the Messiah, that is, until the “anointed one” converted to Islam the following year. What is remarkable, however, is the number of Bohemian and Moravian Jews who continued to believe in—or were reputed to believe in—Shabbetai Sevi after his apostasy, many well into the eighteenth century, and some even into the early nineteenth century. These “believers,” as they called themselves, viewed Shabbetai Sevi’s conversion as a mystical necessity, and they adapted their beliefs and practices accordingly. Radical “believers” outwardly embraced Islam or Christianity, while moderate “believers” remained openly Jewish; both groups, however, surreptitiously circulated manuscripts and practiced rituals that affirmed the messiahship of Shabbetai Sevi.

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Secret societies are elusive by design, so it is impossible to know the extent to which Sabbatianism penetrated the Bohemian Lands. Rabbi Jacob Emden (1697–1776), who was obsessed with rooting out this heretical movement, claimed in 1752 that in Bohemia and Moravia, “the majority of Jews belong to the evil sect.”41 Scholem was more conservative in his estimate, but he readily acknowledged the centrality of the Bohemian Lands in the Sabbatian movement. Moravia was “one of the strongholds of Sabbatianism even into the eighteenth century,” especially in Kremsier (Kroměříž), Holleschau (Holešov), UngarischBrod (Uherský Brod), Nikolsburg, and Prossnitz.42 So, too, was Bohemia—above all Prague, which was “a center of propaganda for Sabbatianism in the West.”43 Rabbi Jonathan Eybeschütz (c. 1694–1764), the preeminent Talmudist who headed a yeshiva in Prague, was even suspected of authoring a Sabbatian tract while living there.44 In the 1750s Emden attacked Eybeschütz relentlessly for his alleged Sabbatianism, stirring up a Europe-wide controversy that had particular resonance in Bohemia and Moravia. From the dawn of the eighteenth century until its end, the Bohemian Lands attracted many preachers and emissaries who were suspected of Sabbatianism. Around 1699 Yehuda Hasid, Hayim Malakh, and Heshel Tsoref held a “Sabbatian council” in Nikolsburg as they led their followers from Poland to the Land of Israel. In 1711–12 Nehemiah Hayyun sojourned in Prague, where he managed to deceive Chief Rabbi David Oppenheim into endorsing a book of Sabbatian sermons. Yehuda Leib Prostitz, a native of Moravia, prophesied the return of Shabbetai Sevi in 1706, declared himself Messiah (son of Joseph) in 1724, and was subsequently excommunicated, but this charismatic Sabbatian prophet still managed to attract devoted followers in Prossnitz, and it is likely that Jonathan Eybeschütz was among them. Thanks to Yehuda Leib and his followers, the Prossnitz Jewish community gained a reputation as a hotbed of Sabbatianism. Its inhabitants were called Shepsen, a derogatory term for followers of Shabbetai Sevi. The Emden-Eybeschütz controversy erupted in 1751 when Jacob Emden accused Jonathan Eybeschütz of distributing Sabbatian amulets, and the brouhaha died down only five years later. At the time Emden lived in Altona (a suburb of Hamburg) and Eybeschütz was chief rabbi of Metz (the capital of Lorraine), but the controversy reverberated across the Bohemian Lands, especially in Moravia, where both Eybeschütz and Emden had family relations and roots. Much to Emden’s chagrin, Moravia’s Jewish communities consistently sided with Eybeschütz. In 1751 the Nikolsburg Jewish community placed a ban on Eybeschütz’s detractors, and other Moravian communities quickly followed suit. Emden, in turn, accused Eybeschütz’s defenders of being Sabbatians themselves,

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and he condemned Moravia’s Jews in the harshest of terms. He even went as far as deeming the Familiants Laws a fitting punishment for their sins. These draconian laws, he claimed, were meant to ensure that “they do not leave their land . . . so their evil does not spread to other provinces, so they will not pollute the land and contaminate it with their impurity.”45 As the Emden-Eybeschütz controversy was quieting down, the Sabbatian movement entered a new stage, and the Bohemian Lands again played a central role. In January 1756 Jacob Frank—who later claimed to be the reincarnation of Shabbetai Sevi—visited a Podolian town where eyewitnesses reported that he and his followers had conducted a ritualized Sabbatian orgy.46 A rabbinical court placed Frank and his followers under the ban, and over the next three years these radical Sabbatians, known as Frankists, rapidly distanced themselves from Judaism. They rejected the Talmud, publicly attacked rabbinic Judaism, and—at a disputation in Lemberg—even claimed that Jews use Christian blood for ritual purposes. In 1759 Frank and his followers converted to Catholicism, but their strange behavior and beliefs continued to raise suspicion among Jews and Christians alike. Frank was arrested in 1760, and imprisoned in the Częstochowa monastery until 1772. During his imprisonment, Frank preached a theology of “redemption through sin,” rooted in his own distorted interpretation of Lurianic Kabbalah, and he sent envoys and epistles to neighboring lands, including Bohemia and Moravia. In 1769 two Frankist envoys appeared in Prossnitz, where they received a warm welcome and were even allowed to hold a sermon in the synagogue. Not surprisingly, when Frank was finally released from prison, he and his entourage moved to Moravia, where he had relatives and a sizeable following. He resided in Brünn (Brno), home of his maternal cousin, Schöndl Dobruschka, from 1773 until 1786, before moving on to Offenbach (outside of Frankfurt am Main). In contrast to the Frankists in Poland, Frank’s adherents in the Bohemian Lands continued to practice Judaism, at least openly.47 Thirty-five Prossnitz Jews went to the baptismal font in June 1773, soon after Frank’s arrival in Brünn, and all but two of Schöndl Dobruschka’s twelve children eventually converted to Catholicism, but these were exceptions to the rule.48 In certain Jewish communities, such as Prossnitz and Kojetein (Kojetín) in Moravia or Prague and Kolin in Bohemia, the existence and persistence of Frankist circles was more or less an “open secret.” Eleazar Fleckeles, rabbi in Kojetein from 1779 to 1783, frequently clashed with local Sabbatians, and according to legend, he once traveled to Brünn in a futile attempt to stop Frank’s missionary activities.49 Fleckeles subsequently returned to Prague, where members of the most prominent Jewish families—Wehle, Bondi, Porges, Zerkowitz, and Hönig—were known to visit

Figure 7. Portrait miniature of Jacob Frank’s daughter, Eva, undated. © Widener Library, Harvard University.

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Frank’s court, first in Brünn, then in Offenbach. Ezekiel Landau (1713–93), chief rabbi of Prague from 1755 to 1793, vehemently condemned public manifestations of Sabbatianism, but even he participated in the conspiracy of silence when it came to the private sphere.50

Rabbinic Culture The Bohemian Lands experienced a flourishing of rabbinic learning in the eighteenth century, and Prague was in a league of its own, especially during Ezekiel Landau’s almost forty years (1755–93) as chief rabbi and head of Prague’s yeshiva and rabbinic court. In the first half of the century, David Oppenheim and Jonathan Eybeschütz headed yeshivas in the Bohemian capital, but the personal rivalry between these two rabbinic luminaries often overshadowed their intellectual accomplishments. (Oppenheim even shut down Eybeschütz’s yeshiva in 1722 following a bitter dispute over limiting the number of students and charging tuition fees.)51 Outside of Prague, there were a few yeshivas of note in Bohemia (e.g., Kolin, Jenikau [Golčův Jeníkov]) and a more impressive network of yeshivas in Moravia (e.g., Holleschau, Trebitsch [Třebíč], Boskowitz [Boskovice], Gross-Meseritsch [Velké Meziříčí], Prossnitz, Leipnik [Lipník nad Bečvou]), crowned by the Nikolsburg yeshiva, which was headed by the Moravian chief rabbi. Nevertheless, at the end of the eighteenth century, “the majority of youth who devoted themselves to the study of Torah set their sights on Prague.”52 In the last decades of the eighteenth century, Ezekiel Landau emerged as the “undisputed spiritual leader of Bohemian Jewry” and the “preeminent talmudic scholar and halakhic decisor” in Central Europe.53 Born and educated in Poland, Landau came to the attention of the Prague Jewish community in 1752, when he tried to mediate between Emden and Eybeschütz in the ongoing controversy. Appointed chief rabbi of Prague in 1755, he was wellsuited to the task of rebuilding a once-glorious community that had suffered the ravages of expulsion (1744–48), fire (1754), and constant infighting. Landau was a commanding figure, in both size and erudition, and his vast influence can be gauged by the number of students who attended his yeshiva and the number of people who turned to him for halakhic advice. Eleazar Fleckeles surely exaggerated when he put the number of students in the “thousands,” but Landau most certainly taught hundreds of students, including Mordecai Benet, the future chief rabbi of Moravia; Moses Münz, the future rabbi of Óbuda (Altofen); and Eleazar Fleckeles, his own successor as chief rabbi of Prague.54 He wrote more than 850 rabbinic responsa, many of which were published in his two-volume magnum opus, Noda’ bi-Yehuda.55

Figure 8. František Šír (Schier), Portrait of Chief Rabbi Ezekiel Landau, based on a painting by M. Klauber, copper engraving, c. 1840. © Jewish Museum in Prague.

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Landau lived in rapidly changing times, and as chief rabbi he confronted internal and external challenges to traditional Jewish society. The internal challenges came primarily in the form of heretical or heterodox ideologies such as Sabbatianism, Frankism, Hasidism, and Pietism, which all had roots in Lurianic Kabbalah. In 1756, when reports of Frank’s ritualized Sabbatian orgy were circulating, Landau prohibited public study of “the Zohar and the Kabbalistic texts.”56 Landau had the utmost respect for Jewish mysticism, but he recognized that, in the wrong hands, these texts were leading Jews to heresy. He also condemned the kabbalistic practices among the “new Hasidim,” as he called the disciples of Israel Ba’al Shem Tov. “New” was to distinguish them from another group that also used the term “Hasidim,” namely the Pietists who gathered around Rabbi Nathan Adler in Frankfurt am Main. Landau had attacked Adler’s kabbalistic customs in 1773, and he was certainly not pleased when the Boskowitz Jewish community invited him to be their rabbi in 1782. The Jews of Boskowitz quickly regretted this decision, and amid disputes and slanders, Adler was forced out less than two years later.57 Adler was accompanied by his student, Moses Sofer (1762–1839), who remained in Moravia until 1798; later known as the “Hatam Sofer,” he became rabbi of Pressburg in 1806.

Josephinian Reforms The external challenges came primarily from above. Between 1781 and 1789, Emperor Joseph II issued a series of Edicts of Toleration (Toleranzpatenten) for his non-Catholic subjects, with the stated aim of allowing them to participate “without distinction of nationality and religion” in the “common public welfare.” These edicts, promulgated first for Calvinists, Lutherans, and Greek Orthodox, and then for Jews, were part of the sweeping Josephinian reforms that, in addition to removing certain disabilities, also marked the unprecedented intervention of the state in the internal affairs of its subjects. Joseph II aimed to transform his Jewish subjects into “productive” citizens and break down the social barriers separating them from the surrounding Christian population, leading many scholars to view the Edicts of Toleration as the beginning of Jewish emancipation in Central Europe. But more important, the edicts signified a major policy shift on the part of the state. As Michael K. Silber has put it, Joseph II’s reign “inaugurated the modern tutelary state’s policies of tough love towards its Jewish subjects.”58 Joseph II had no great affection for his Jewish subjects, but unlike his mother, Maria Theresa, and his grandfather Charles VI, he hoped to integrate them into the populations of his realm rather than isolate them, segregate them, or

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expel them. For the Bohemian Lands, he issued three separate Edicts of Toleration—first for Bohemia (October 19, 1781), then for Austrian Silesia (December 15, 1781) and Moravia (February 13, 1782)—and, with minor differences, they shared a common goal of bringing about the economic and cultural transformation of the Jews. In the economic sphere the edicts aimed to reduce the Jews’ almost caste-like concentration in petty trade by encouraging them to engage in more “productive” occupations, such as agriculture, handicrafts, manufacturing, and haulage. To this effect Jews were permitted to lease agricultural land (for up to twenty years), apprentice themselves to Christian masters, join Christian guilds, and even establish factories beyond the confines of existing Jewish communities. In the cultural sphere the edicts aimed to break down linguistic barriers—and the mistrust they often bred—by prohibiting the use of Hebrew and Yiddish in official documents (e.g., contracts, bills, ledgers, and last wills) and requiring Jews to learn the “language of the land.” Naturally, such a linguistic shift could not be effected without the transformation of the educational system, and to this end the edicts ordered the Jews to establish their own schools under state supervision or send their children to Christian ones. In Bohemia and Moravia the language of instruction was not Czech, but German, which gradually supplanted Yiddish as the lingua franca of Central European Jewry. The German-Jewish elementary schools were one of the most enduring legacies of the Josephinian reforms, becoming fixtures in Bohemian and Moravian communities until the end of the nineteenth century, and in some Moravian communities, until the early twentieth century. But as Hillel  J. Kieval has observed, “their success was not a foregone conclusion.”59 In Galicia, for example, the new German-Jewish schools aroused bitter opposition among more conservative elements, especially after 1787, when the Bohemian-born Herz Homberg was appointed superintendent of Jewish schools in this recently acquired Habsburg province. A friend and disciple of Moses Mendelssohn, Homberg tried to reform Jewish education in the spirit of the Haskalah, but his heavy-handed tactics and his radical ideas increasingly antagonized Galicia’s rabbis and community leaders. In Bohemia, Landau left nothing to chance. He worked closely with the superintendent of schools, a liberal-minded Catholic priest, to ensure that the new schools would offer instruction only in secular subjects, not in traditional Jewish subjects, which were to remain firmly in the hands of the rabbinic establishment. As Kieval has shown, Landau was “determined from the beginning to exert his influence on the course of change rather than simply condemn it out of hand.”60 His influence could also be felt in Moravia, where there were as many as forty-two German-Jewish schools (compared to twenty-five in Bohemia). Mordecai Benet, Landau’s student and the chief

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rabbi of Moravia and Austrian Silesia from 1789 until 1829, also did his utmost to keep religious and secular instruction apart.61 The Edicts of Toleration removed many of the most degrading restrictions but left in place the most onerous of the anti-Jewish measures: the Familiants Laws. Jews were no longer required to wear distinguishing badges, pay the humiliating body tax (Leibmaut), or remain housebound until noon on Sundays and Christian holidays, but they were still severely limited when it came to marriage and, by extension, procreation. In this respect, all three edicts affirmed the status quo. “Our highest intention is in no way to increase the number of Jewish believers in Our Patrimonial Margravate,” stated the Moravian edict. “Rather, We expressly wish that they should remain in Our Patrimonial Margravate of Moravia exactly as they are now; their established number is not to be exceeded, nor should Jews settle in the future where no Jews have lived before, except if they wish to build a factory on a piece of ground previously not built on, or if We, ourselves . . . consider this to be beneficial.”62 Indeed, the Edicts of Toleration aimed to make the Jews more productive, not more prolific, and Joseph II was unwilling to abolish the draconian population controls that had already been in place for more than half a century. In 1787, however, he did authorize a slight increase in the number of Familiants in the lands of the Bohemian Crown, from 5,106 to 5,400 in Moravia, and from 8,541 to 8,600 in Bohemia. In truncated Austrian Silesia, the number remained unchanged at 119.63 In 1787 Joseph II also ordered his Jewish subjects to adopt fixed personal and family names, just over a decade after his mother ordered her Christian subjects to do the same.64 The impetus for this measure was the desire to remedy the administrative chaos that reigned in Jewish communities such as Teplitz (Teplice), where it was not uncommon for an individual Jew to appear in municipal records under as many as six different names. Imperial officials mistakenly assumed that Jews would welcome this reform, but instead Jews of Bohemia and Moravia registered their displeasure with this bureaucratic intrusion into their private lives and religious practices. The decree ordered Jews to adopt German forenames, prompting spokesmen for the Jews of Bohemia and Moravia to request permission for Jews to keep their original Jewish forenames, or “circumcision names,” in the words of Moravian chief rabbi Gershon Chajes.65 Otherwise, Chajes argued, it would be difficult for Jews to observe certain religious laws. Privately, many Jews continued to use their Hebrew or Yiddish (or, in rare cases, Czech) forenames, but they were required to use their German ones—selected from a list of recognized names—for official purposes. Some Jews adopted new surnames tied to their occupation or place of origin, but others retained old surnames—like Abeles, Karpeles, Jeiteles, and Wehle— that had been in use in the Bohemian Land for generations.66 In the Bohemian

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countryside, some Jews used Czech surnames, such as Zelenka, Korálek, Oplatek, and Zemánek.67 With an eye toward making his Jewish subjects more “useful” to the state and more integrated in the surrounding society, Joseph II introduced Jewish military conscription in 1788, first in Galicia, then in the Bohemian Lands and Hungary. Nearly a decade of heated debate—in the public sphere, in the Habsburg bureaucracy, and among the empire’s Jews—attested to the lack of consensus regarding the desirability and feasibility of Jewish military ser vice.68 Would Sabbath observance and the Jewish dietary laws pose unsurmountable obstacles or “unnecessary difficulties”? Were Jews even physically capable of serving in the army, or were they simply too short and too weak? The Imperial War Council recommended that Jews be permitted to hire mercenaries, and representatives of Galician Jewry requested a blanket Jewish exemption from military ser vice, but in the end Joseph II insisted that Jews not only do ser vice but that they do so “in natura.”69 Initially, Jewish conscripts were assigned exclusively to the transport corps, because they were deemed unfit for combat. As contemporary sources readily attest, Jews in the Bohemian Lands were conflicted in their reaction to Jewish conscription. Abraham Trebitsch, secretary to the Moravian chief rabbi, lamented the manifestations of ritual laxity among the new conscripts who passed through Nikolsburg in the summer of 1788. “Among them were those who ate non-kosher food,” he recalled some years later. “They ate leavened food on Passover and drank Gentile wine. They do not observe the Sabbath.”70 Ezekiel Landau was equally concerned about ritual observance, but as reported by Ha-Me’assef, the main organ of the Berlin Haskalah, Landau chose words of comfort and encouragement over expressions of anguish and dismay when he addressed the twenty-five Prague Jews who showed up for duty in May 1789.71 “God and our all-merciful emperor want you to be conscripted for military ser vice,” he declared before explaining to them how best to keep the Sabbath, observe the dietary laws, and pray while serving in the army. He gave each conscript a prayer shawl (tzitzit), phylacteries (tefillin), and a prayer book, but more important, he gave them—and their tearful mothers—assurances that the personal military ser vice of individual Jews would accrue to the benefit of the empire’s entire Jewish population. “Earn thanks and honor for yourselves and for our entire nation,” he declared, “so that it will be known that our hitherto oppressed nation loves the sovereign ruler and his government and is prepared to make sacrifices for him. Through you, I hope we . . . will be relieved of those disabilities that still afflict us. What glory and love you will bring forth in the eyes of your fellow brethren and all virtuous people!” Landau, like Trebitsch, surely disapproved of military conscription, but he also recognized that this civic obligation was instituted by a benevolent monarch—not as a form

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of punishment or discrimination, but as a further step toward removing some of the restrictions that the Edicts of Toleration had left in place. As with the German-Jewish schools, Landau also recognized that it was sometimes better to influence, or at least accommodate, change than to let it go unchecked.72

Moderate Haskalah The Josephinian reforms coincided with the spread of the Haskalah, the Jewish Enlightenment movement that originated in Berlin in the 1770s and centered around the figure of Moses Mendelssohn. Bohemian-born Herz Homberg was among Mendelssohn’s closest disciples, but the Haskalah in the Bohemian Lands is more closely linked to Baruch (Benedikt) Jeitteles (1762–1813), the “undisputed leader” of the Prague Haskalah, and Josef Flesch (1781–1839), the “ father of the Moravian Haskalah.”73 The Prague Haskalah started off in the 1780s as a branch of the Berlin Haskalah, but by the end of the century its adherents rejected the increasingly radical and anti-rabbinic tenor coming from Berlin and adopted their own, more conservative approach to Jewish law and traditions.74 This is hardly surprising, considering that Israel Landau (1758–1829), the chief rabbi’s youngest son, was a key figure in the Prague Haskalah, and that Baruch Jeitteles himself was head of a Prague yeshiva.75 Hebrew played an impor tant role in the Prague Haskalah, but so too did Yiddish (or Judeo-German), which Berlin maskilim, proponents of Haskalah, often disparaged as a corrupt and useless jargon. “I wrote this book in the language that I generally speak, in the language spoken by the masses,” Israel Landau noted in the preface to one of his maskilic works, which he published in Yiddish.76 The Moravian Haskalah differed from the Prague Haskalah in several respects. In Bohemia, the Haskalah was an urban phenomenon, limited primarily to Prague, but in Moravia, the Haskalah flourished in small market towns, such as Prossnitz, Neu-Rausnitz (Rousínov), Triesch (Třešť), and Nikolsburg, that boasted sizeable Jewish communities, and more impor tant, active yeshivas. As Michael  K. Silber has noted, yeshivas “played the unforeseen role of Haskalah centers par excellence,” because they allowed the “cream of Jewish youth” to come together and devote their time to intellectual pursuits.77 In Bohemia, outside of Prague, there were no yeshivas of note at the end of the eighteenth century, but in Moravia, a constellation of celebrated yeshivas continued to thrive—and attract students from all over the monarchy—until the middle of the nineteenth century. Indeed, rabbinic culture was rooted and secure enough in Moravia that “the winds of knowledge and wisdom that blew in from Germany” did not constitute a serious threat to traditional Jewish practice and belief.78 Some heads of yeshivas, including chief rabbi Mordecai

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Benet, even displayed a degree of sympathy for the moderate Haskalah and its deep appreciation for medieval Jewish philosophy, biblical grammar, and refined Hebrew prose.

Conclusion: Beyond Prague For much of the eighteenth century, Prague was the center of gravity of Bohemian and Moravian Jewry, and a religious, cultural, and economic hub for much of Central European Jewry. It was a “city and mother in Israel” (ir va-’em beyisrael) prior to the 1745 expulsion, and—thanks to Ezekiel Landau’s outsize leadership role—even after the exiles returned in 1748. During Landau’s thirtyeight years (1755–93) as chief rabbi of Prague, the Bohemian capital was at the crossroads of the Ashkenazic world: Landau’s yeshiva attracted students from Bohemia, Moravia, Hungary, Poland, and beyond; and his more than 850 responsa attested to his position as the preeminent rabbinic authority of his day. Respected by traditionalists and maskilim alike, Landau was uniquely qualified to accommodate change, be it military conscription or mandatory schooling, in the Josephinian age. At the end of the eighteenth century, Prague remained the focal point of Bohemian Jewry, but it became increasingly marginal in the wider context of Central European Jewry. Landau’s tenure as chief rabbi was a highwater mark, and following his death in 1793, Prague gradually lost its significance as a rabbinic center. Moravia’s yeshivas continued to flourish until the middle of the nineteenth century, and Hungary’s yeshivas—especially the one in Pressburg (today’s Bratislava)—attracted students from all over the Habsburg monarchy. The Frankfurt-born Moses Sofer (“Hatam Sofer”), who spent sixteen years in Moravia, eventually assumed Landau’s mantle as the preeminent rabbinic authority of his age. Along with many of the “later-born” Bohemian and Moravian Jews, Sofer migrated to Hungary, first to Mattersdorf in 1798, then to Pressburg in 1806. As head of the Pressburg yeshiva, however, he did not seek to accommodate reforms, but rather to thwart them. In this respect, he was keeping with the more reactionary attitudes of the Habsburg rulers following the death of Leopold II, Joseph II’s brother and successor, in 1792. Shaken by the radicalism of the French Revolution, Leopold’s son, Francis II, repealed most of the Josephinian reforms, but many of the Jewish reforms—elementary schooling, military conscription, and the adoption of German names—remained in place, shaping Bohemian and Moravian Jewry for generations to come.

C h apter 3

Unequal Mobility: Jews, State, and Society in an Era of Contradictions, 1790–1860 Hillel J. Kieval

Prologue On the morning of November 23, 1848, on Vienna’s city moat by the Neues Tor, twenty-five-year-old Hermann Jellinek (1822–48), a native of Ungarisch Brod (Uherský Brod) in Moravia, was executed by firing squad for his role in Vienna’s revolutionary movement. A journalist and political philosopher who had been writing for the Allgemeine Österreichische Zeitung and Der Radikale since arriving in Vienna from his hometown in March 1848, Jellinek had been tried and convicted by both a military and a civilian court on the charge of “open incitement to armed insurrection.”1 His writings, it was claimed, had advocated armed uprising against the Austrian government, a charge Jellinek vigorously, if disingenuously, denied.2 On the eve of his execution, Jellinek was visited in prison by his companion, a Protestant woman by the name of Amalie Hempel (1823–1852), who recently had given birth to their daughter, Hermine. Later that night, he composed a testament as well as farewell letters to his father and younger brother, Moritz.3 During the predawn hours, Jellinek engaged in a long conversation with Leopold Breuer, who was standing in for Rabbi Isak Noa Mannheimer (1793–1865) of Vienna—not, revealingly, on the topic of religion, about which Jellinek declared himself to be “fully sorted out” (“ganz im Reinen mit sich selbst”). In the moments just before his execution, Jellinek continued to proclaim his innocence and argue against the logic of the verdict against him; then, collecting himself, he shouted, “Now, shoot me dead!”4 A most disturbing end to a promising life, cut short by what might well be regarded as a judicial murder. And how distant, it seems, from his origins and

Map 5. Central Europe circa 1800.

In order to trace key demographic changes in Jewish settlement in the Bohemian Lands, the same twenty-three Jewish communities are shown on the maps throughout this book. The percentage indicates the size of each Jewish community in relation to the total number of Jews in the Bohemian Lands in the period represented. An “x” indicates that no Jewish community existed in that location at the time. For further information on these Jewish communities, see the supplementary essay by Helena Klímová and Lenka Matušíková.

Map 6. Jewish Population of the Bohemian Lands circa 1850 (approx. 116,000).

Figure 9. Portrait of Rabbi Adolf Jellinek (preacher in the Jewish community of Vienna), copper engraving, undated. © Jewish Museum in Prague.

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upbringing! The Jellineks were a family of religiously Orthodox village Jews residing in Drslawitz (Drslavice) outside Ungarisch Brod, where the father, Isak Löw Jellinek, leased a distillery from a noble family. Hermann (also known as Herschel) was the second of three sons born to Isak Löw and his wife, Sara, each embarking on a different career. The older brother, Adolf (Aron, 1820–93), already a rabbi in the modern style by the time Hermann became a revolutionary, gained fame over the years for his dynamic preaching—his carefully crafted sermons delivered in exquisite German—as well as for his scholarship on rabbinic literature, and would eventually become chief rabbi of Vienna. Hermann’s younger brother, Moritz (1824–83), to whom he was very close, studied political economy and moved to Budapest, where he founded the Budapest Streetcar Company.5 Hermann underwent a radical break from the Judaism of his family, moved in left-Hegelian intellectual circles in Leipzig and Berlin, and claimed a spiritual affinity to Baruch Spinoza (1632–77) and Uriel da Costa (1590–1640)—Dutch Jews of Spanish-Portuguese descent, both of whom had been accused of heresy and excommunicated from the Amsterdam Jewish community.6 Hermann was a rebel, at war with his father and mother, disdainful of “small-town” Jewish Moravia, committed to democracy and freedom for humanity at large. He was in no way typical, or representative, of Jewish society in the Bohemian Lands. But all the elements of Hermann Jellinek’s biography—his village origins, his early education in Ungarisch Brod, his yeshiva study in Prossnitz (Prostějov), his move to Prague and later to Leipzig to acquire a “Western” education, even his radical political activity—connect to key aspects of the Central European Jewish experience in the first six decades of the nineteenth century. In his short life, moreover, Jellinek experienced many of the historical circumstances— opportunities as well as barriers; hopes bounded by frustrations—that shaped Jewish fortunes in the post-Josephinian era. The father’s occupation of leaseholder to a noble family hearkened back to an early modern system of settlement and protection that bypassed the control of hostile urban competitors. Jews in Ungarisch Brod lived in a separate political and geographic enclave, the Judenstadt, the number of families tightly regulated by the Familiants Laws, which continued to be in force until the fateful events of 1848. (The Jewish Town was allocated 160 family numbers in the eighteenth century, equaling a population of 936; it rose to 1,006 by 1857.)7 As a child, Jellinek attended both the traditional, Jewish primary school in Ungarisch Brod and the newer German-Jewish Trivialschule that was a product of Joseph II’s reforms (1780–90). This blending of “tradition” and “modernity” continued into Jellinek’s yeshiva study in Prossnitz, as we shall see later in this chapter; in his case, however, it was a combination that led to inner conflict and

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turmoil. In the course of Hermann’s secular studies in Prague and, later, Leipzig, he openly broke with the religious beliefs and observances of his parents, choosing instead to embrace a critical perspective (Wissenschaft) on all of tradition. While most middle-class Jews in the Bohemian Lands looked to the revolutionary events of 1848 finally to achieve full legal equality for Jews, Jellinek steadfastly identified with the human struggle for emancipation. His was a very Jewish life, if untypical of that of most of his fellow Jews.

Setting the Stage There was no single pattern to the three-pronged relationship of Jews, state, and society in the Bohemian Lands during the years that spanned the death of Emperor Joseph II in 1790 and the constitutional reforms of the 1860s. To some extent the relationship reflected the tension that was to be found in Habsburg politics in general: the contest between radical change (including change imposed from above) and conservative tradition, centralizing efforts and local privilege, determination to see modernizing projects through to completion and benign neglect. It would not be unfair to ask whether, in the wake of the tumultuous decade of the 1780s—which witnessed the direct intervention of the state in Jewish affairs in such matters as education, occupational choice, juridical autonomy, language use in record-keeping and public communication, the choice of names, military ser vice, and the right to marry—the state would continue to focus so much attention on its Jewish population when there was no longer an enlightened absolutist at the helm. Would the state continue to require the systematic destruction of institutions of Jewish autonomy, or would it accommodate the status quo ante? Would it promote the integration of Jews to Bohemian, Moravian, and Silesian society or try to preserve social and communal boundaries? Would the state continue to have separate laws for Jews and for non-Jews, subjecting Jews to special taxation, restrictions on settlement, occupation, and population growth? What, in short, becomes of the revolution when the revolutionary leader is no more? When one trains one’s sights on the interactions of Jews with their non-Jewish neighbors—the places Jews occupied in local society—again it is the contradiction between tradition and change, separation and integration, ghetto lanes and bourgeois boulevards, that commands our attention. The restrictive Familiants Laws, which capped the number of Jewish families legally allowed to reside in the lands of the Bohemian Crown, continued to encroach upon Jewish marriage and family patterns down to the Revolution of 1848. At the same time, the Jews of Prague were required to reside within the boundaries of the Jewish Town, a legally enforced ghetto, while the royal free cities of Bohemia and Moravia—

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places like Brünn (Brno), Olmütz (Olomouc), and Iglau (Jihlava) in Moravia; Pilsen (Plzeň), Königgrätz (Hradec Králové), and Budweis (České Budějovice) in Bohemia—continued to prohibit Jewish settlement until the same revolutionary year. Yet the Jewish population did grow, if modestly. Most Jews in Bohemia lived scattered throughout the countryside in villages and very small towns, in settlements sometimes as small as a few families, where their daily interactions with the local, non-Jewish population were very close. In Moravia, Jews lived in smallto medium-sized market towns, which were controlled by the landed nobility with whom Jews enjoyed close economic ties. Even in Prague not all Jews lived within the confines of the ghetto. Wealthy Jews and industrialists began to move into fashionable neighborhoods beyond the traditionally marked Jewish world, rubbing shoulders with Christians of the same social standing, joining— or attempting to join—patriotic societies and social clubs, even holding local political office. With legal restrictions on marriage and settlement removed in 1848, the Jewish population in the Bohemian Lands would experience a small jump in size, matched by a decades-long migration from villages and small towns to larger cities, both within the Bohemian Lands and beyond. A similar dynamism could be found in the spheres of culture and education. While the opening of the first Jewish Normalschule in Prague in 1782 occurred with pomp and ceremony, it would only be in the nineteenth century—under the influence of Jewish and state schools, shopkeepers and master craftsmen, mothers and fathers, and private tutors—that identification with the language, high culture, and civic values of the imperial state would expand to incorporate virtually all the Jewish population. These social and cultural trends developed according to a timetable, and at a pace, that occasionally seemed immune to the politics of revolution and reaction that rattled state and society in the Bohemian Lands. Well before the formal emancipation of 1867, the state, the Jewish community, the schools, and the economy combined to produce modern Jewish subjects—fluent in the languages and high culture of the state, attuned to the political concerns of their neighbors, and skilled at navigating avenues to social mobility and advancement.

Cultures in Flux: Schools, Traditional and Modern Joseph II had not been alone in his desire to mold a new type of Jewish subject through the vehicle of the educational system: fluent in the high culture of the state, economically productive, and patriotic. He found ready allies in an important subset of the bureaucracy in Vienna and Prague, as well as in the maskilim, the Jewish proponents of the Enlightenment project. Other interested

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parties—including prominent members of the communal and religious leadership, a substantial number of parents, and at least some officials—reacted with skepticism and re sistance. They may have doubted the efficacy of the project itself, questioned the propriety of government interference in Jewish education, or simply have felt that, during a time of protracted war, the state had  more pressing priorities to attend to.8 All these factors seem to have been present between 1796 and 1812, during which time the German Jewish Hauptschule in Prague and the numerous Trivialschulen throughout the Bohemian Lands underwent a serious decline in enrollment and teacher morale. Jewish communal leaders in Prague petitioned the emperor in 1796 to reduce the size of the teaching staff in the Hauptschule and to encourage the practice of private instruction in household settings. In 1817 and again in 1826 they sought to shut down the school completely. If one is to believe Johann Wanniczek, the school’s director in the 1830s, the Jewish householders acted out of less than noble motives, moved by a combination of personal animosity, a desire to save money, and, possibly, disapproval of the behav ior of one or another teacher.9 Wanniczek’s survey of the first half-century of the Prague Normalschule’s existence praised the significant progress that had been made in redirecting Jewish culture and education in the Bohemian Lands. But he also reflected upon two problems, which underscored the continuing cultural and religious divisions among Jews in the Bohemian Lands at the time, points of contention that should remind us that education and cultural adaptation can occur in more than one way: There was more than one avenue to the production of modern Jewish subjects. The first question had to do with the large cadre of private teachers, who were seen as competing with the faculty of the Normalschulen in one way or another. These young, undisciplined, and unlicensed teachers—often dressed in traditional Orthodox fashion—posed an almost provocative challenge to state bureaucrats and Jewish Enlightenment activists alike, since they operated outside approved institutional frameworks and seemed to embody “backward” educational practices. Wanniczek himself differentiated between private teachers in general and bocherim (Hebrew: baḥurim), young men and boys studying at a local yeshiva. Both types served as tutors of children in private homes and thus worked at cross purposes to the German-Jewish schools, competing with the schools for potential students, and encouraging Jewish householders in their prejudices and suspicions. Similar criticisms of private teachers were voiced in Moravia.10 The second concern voiced by the headmaster targeted the absence of an adequate, modern, Jewish curriculum either in the Josephinian schools or in the traditional ḥeder and Talmud Torah. In their negotiations with the state, Rabbi

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Figure 10. View of the Jewish school in Brandeis (Brandýs nad Labem), Bohemia, undated. © Jewish Museum in Prague.

Ezekiel Landau and the conservative elites of the Jewish community had successfully blocked any incorporation of Jewish subjects into the new schools, fearing that they would be presented from a critical, rationalist perspective. For the most part the wall separating the modern school from traditional Jewish learning remained in place until at least the 1830s, but there were two important exceptions. First, religion and civic virtue were, in the eyes of the state, linked, and all public institutions were required by the Studienhofkommission to incorporate into their curriculum courses on “religious morality.” This was usually accomplished through specially composed readers, but, since no Jewish reader existed when the German-Jewish schools were first launched, teachers and students had to content themselves in the beginning with adaptations from Christian readers with potentially objectionable material excised.11 Second, the Hauptschule in Prague began to offer its own instruction in Hebrew language and the Hebrew Bible in 1809, though only after regular hours, apparently on Sundays.12

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For years the Bohemian-born maskil Peter Beer (1758–1838) had tried but failed to have his own biblical history, Toledot Yisrael (The history of Israel, 1796), introduced as a textbook in the German-Jewish schools throughout the monarchy. Habsburg officials preferred to see a less controversial German textbook modeled on Christian catechisms, and it was not until 1810 that the state decided to select a Jewish-authored reader in religion and ethics—eventually mandating that all Jewish couples who wished to receive a marriage license first pass an examination on the text. Unfortunately for Beer, the state did not choose one of his religious manuals, such as Dat Israel (The religion of Israel, 1809–10), but rather the work of a rival, Herz Homberg (1749–1841): Bne Zion (1812), a moderately pious book that opened with didactic lessons on the nature of man and God and closed with an outline of civic duties toward others in society.13 If the last years of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century marked a period of stagnation, and even decline, for the German-Jewish schools of Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia, the situation improved steadily after 1810. There are several ways to measure this change in the schools’ fortunes. The appointment of Beer to the Prague Hauptschule in 1810, and of Homberg as superintendent of the German-Jewish schools in Bohemia in 1816, revitalized the faculty and strengthened the programmatic voice of the Haskalah in school affairs. And it was only in 1813 that the school received its first formal director in Moses Wiener. Before that time the directorship had rotated monthly among the faculty of the school. The next two directors, Anton Raaz and Johann Wanniczek, both non-Jews, committed themselves to raising the school’s profile and communal prestige, establishing it as the principle address for Jewish primary education.14 With the death of Peter Beer in 1838, the position of teacher of religion and morality was combined with that of teacher of the Jewish religion in the gymnasia (classical high schools). The first holder of this new position, Dr. Wolfgang Wessely, would eventually go on to gain an appointment at Charles University.15 One can also look at enrollment figures. These show a steep drop in 1796 and 1797, followed by a recovery in 1798, and a drop again from 1799 to 1810 (except for brief spikes in 1804 and 1807). A long-term, upward swing in attendance begins in 1811, jumps significantly in 1813, and maintains this level through the early 1830s. The lowest attendance at Prague’s German-Jewish school (made up of the Hauptschule, a school for girls [Mädchenschule], and a Trivialschule) occurred in 1797 (167 students); the highest (814) in 1823.16 The total number of student enrollments for the years 1782 to 1832 was 17,836. For the period 1832 to 1856 (according to a historical overview published that year), one would need to increase the last figure by one-third, bringing total

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enrollments at Prague’s German-Jewish school over the course of seventy-three years to 23,810.17 By mid-century the German-Jewish school system in Bohemia and Moravia appeared to be on sound footing. Scattered throughout Bohemia in 1853 were twenty-five Trivialschulen, a Hauptschule in Prague, together with a separate Mädchenschule and a two-grade Unterrealschule. Jewish schools in Bohemia could boast thirty teachers, thirteen assistant teachers, three female teachers, and an enrollment of 2,503 out of a total of 3,059 Jewish children of elementary school age.18 Orphanages for Jewish children operated in Kolín and in Prague. And in 1855 a private women’s association announced the establishment of an institution for the education of poor Jewish orphan girls. The foundation had more than 250 members, with 6,000 florins in capital and annual contributions (from members) of 1,200 florins.19 Moravia, meanwhile, counted thirty-two Jewish Trivialschulen, one Hauptschule, one Mädchenschule, thirty-seven teachers, ten assistant teachers, and four women teachers. Moravia’s Jewish schools were attended by 3,500 children in 1853 out of a potential 3,833. One town also provided a children’s day nursery.20 Finally, one can measure the strength of the German-Jewish schools in the Bohemian Lands by observing their growing prominence in the Jewish educational landscape. When the Josephinian schools first took shape in the 1780s, the hours of instruction were quite modest: only two hours per day, from 5 to 7 in the evening. One can see from this the original conception of the schools, at least from the perspective of the religious and communal leadership: They were viewed as a purely supplementary institution, there to provide the opportunity to gain fluency in German, mathematics, and natural history, not to compete with traditional Jewish education, which retained a monopoly over the most desirable teaching hours. The government tried on a few occasions to alter the teaching schedule. In 1793 negotiations involving lay community leaders, judges on the beit din (rabbinical court), and teachers at the Prague Hauptschule over a proposal to schedule half the teaching day in the morning and half in the afternoon broke down over strong opposition from the community.21 The question would continue to be discussed for years, but it would not be until November 1814 that the Gubernium took formal action on the matter, deciding that, beginning with the new year, the teaching hours would indeed be from 8 to 10 in the morning and from 2 to 4 in the afternoon.22 By simple administrative decree, then, the hierarchical relationship between the Normalschule and the Talmud Torah was permanently reversed. If, at midcentury, 82  percent of eligible Jewish children in Bohemia and 91 percent of eligible Jewish children in Moravia were enrolled in German-Jewish

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schools, how were the other children educated? Certainly, the older cultural pattern of education in the household by private tutors continued to be maintained, while the larger percentage of children in Bohemia who did not enroll in a German-Jewish school probably derives from the dispersed pattern of Jewish settlement in the countryside. Many villages and small towns did not have enough Jewish families to support their own school. In these situations Jewish children attended local, usually Czech, schools—a reminder that not all adaptation was directed at German language and culture; increasingly, Jews were being educated in Czech, particularly in the Bohemian countryside.23 And we can see from the fact that Czech was taught at the Prague Hauptschule as early as the 1840s that Jewish cultural orientations were in flux in the Bohemian capital as well.24 The vitality of traditional modes of Jewish learning posed a challenge to modern Jewish educators and government officials through much of the first half of the nineteenth century. At times their concerns centered on the uncontrolled movement of bocherim in cities and towns, at times on the conservative parents who continued to hire private teachers, and at times on the entrenched, traditional curriculum for the training of rabbis in the Bohemian Lands. The governor’s office (Statthalterei) in Bohemia tried on several occasions to rein in the many bocherim in the capital. Prague city officials in 1812 instituted the monitoring both of the city’s so-called “Winkelschulen” (ḥadarim) and of “foreign” bocherim. A Bohemian decree of 1813 ordered all such yeshiva students to return to their places of birth within two months and made the heads of the Jewish community answerable to any future entry and settlement of bocherim not native to the Bohemian Lands. These efforts were probably ineffective, however, as many of these young men continued to enter and reside in Prague under a variety of pretexts: not only Talmud study, but also bookkeeping, and to learn any number of foreign languages, including—but not limited to—Hebrew. They stayed in the city for years, Johann Wanniczek complained, “harm the public school, the parents, and the children through highly deficient teaching, and take away from native-born, qualified [geprüften] private tutors their own modest employment.”25

Rabbis, Old and New Another seemingly intractable aspect of traditional Jewish education concerned advanced Talmud study and the training of rabbis. From the 1790s to the 1830s, battles raged over the type of training rabbis received in the Bohemian Lands as well as the qualifications deemed necessary for holders of official rabbinic positions. There were several parties to these conflicts: reform-minded Jewish

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activists; the Austrian administration; the Bohemian governor’s office in Prague; the lay leadership of the Prague Jewish community; as well as senior Bohemian rabbis. The stakes were high for all parties. What intellectual formation should the modern rabbi possess? How was his position in the Jewish community to be defined: as preacher of ethics and religious values or as Talmudic decisor? What ought to be the role of the state in determining the qualifications for clergy? The Haskalah’s own campaign against the Talmud, the power struggle between maskilim and conservatives in the Jewish community, and the state’s overarching concern to supervise the cultural integration of its Jewish subjects only intensified the conflict over rabbinical training. Enlightened officials tended to regard the education of rabbis as akin to the production of Protestant and Catholic clergymen, one of whose more important political functions was to help create loyal, upstanding, and productive subjects for the imperial state. They thus expected the curriculum for aspiring clergy to comprise theology, homiletics, ethics, and preaching. From the point of view of the enlightened bureaucrat, the traditional, nearly exclusive, concentration on Talmud and Jewish law in the yeshivot of East Central Europe seemed archaic at best and at worst a hindrance to the production of modern, loyal subjects. The more stalwart partisans of the Haskalah, critical of the Jewish community’s traditional, almost exclusive, emphasis on Talmudic study in the training of rabbis—and of the place of the Talmud in the shaping of Jewish identity—supported efforts to reform rabbinical education in the Bohemian Lands, and put forward various proposals to establish a new type of institution: a Jewish theological seminary, designed to graduate modern rabbis.26 Maskilim and reform-minded Habsburg officials often found common cause on this matter. As far back as the Josephinian period, Joseph Anton von Riegger (1742–95) had proposed that all future rabbis in the Bohemian Lands be required to have completed university studies. Talmud study, in his view, produced nothing but “zealots and sophists . . . overly subtle Talmudists, word twisters, Pharisees, hypocrites, men with no morals.” In short, “people without humanity.”27 Christian as well as Jewish enlighteners were interested in changing traditional rabbis into modern, preaching clergymen and in transforming traditional yeshivot into theological seminaries. Herz Homberg and Peter Beer pressed for the establishment of a state-supervised rabbinical seminary, whose curriculum would emphasize the Bible and homiletics and virtually exclude the Talmud. Homberg went so far as to recommend to the Bohemian governor’s office that the study of the Talmud should be prohibited until a fundamental censoring of it had been completed. Such plans never materialized, however. They were opposed both by the leadership of the Prague Jewish community and by the rabbinate; but they also met with ambivalence from more conservative

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Habsburg officials, who tended to defer to the religious and communal leadership of the Jewish community on matters regarding the clergy.28 And, although the Judensystemalpatent of 1797 (an attempt to restate all current legislation on Jewish matters) seemed to require that henceforth all communal rabbis needed to have attained a university education, it would be decades before this requirement was strictly enforced. In the meantime, public officials (particularly in Prague) often demonstrated great deference toward traditional rabbis and Jewish religious elites.29 It was only decades into the cultural modernization of Bohemian, Moravian, and Silesian Jews that the state began to insist that rabbis in the crown lands reflect the Josephinian educational ideal. An imperial decree of 1820 mandated that candidates for rabbinic positions had to demonstrate that they had passed an examination evincing a thorough knowledge of philosophical studies along with “Jewish religious teachings.” The latter term, while vague, may have been meant to indicate something closer to Herz Homberg’s “catechism” than to positive law, an articulation of modern Jewish theology rather than the analysis of Talmudic texts.30 The Prague rabbinate, led by Samuel Landau (1751–1834) and Eleazar Fleckeles (1754–1826), demurred, however, claiming that the imperial decree did not really require any change in curriculum; that, in fact, the traditional examination for the designation moreinu should continue to be recognized as fulfilling the requirement; and that the right of individual communities to elect their rabbis not be infringed.31 Juda Jeitteles (1773–1838) of Prague proposed a compromise that would break the impasse between the state and the Jewish community. He suggested that those rabbis who were content to limit their activity to adjudicating Halakhah (Zeremonialgesetz) would carry the title Religionsweiser and would not be required by the state to demonstrate more than a working knowledge of German. “Rabbis,” from the perspective of the law, would be those “teachers of the people [Volkslehrer]” who served as preachers and spiritual guides; hence, they would need to have studied subjects such as philosophy, Oriental languages and literatures, biblical archaeology, and Jewish theology at the gymnasium and university level. Every community would need to elect religious leaders from each category. Although the leadership of the Prague Jewish community opposed this suggestion as well, the ruling did take effect. State records testify to public examinations of at least two of Prague’s three yeshivot by a government examination commission, held with solemnity in the Jewish Town Hall in 1822.32 For Prague’s yeshivot to be registered as “privileged public rabbinical schools” (Privilegierte öffentliche Rabbinatsschule), their students had to have completed the third year of the Hauptschule and be tested by Peter Beer on Homberg’s Bne Zion.

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From 1823 on, the three Prague yeshivot bore this official title and their directors the title of “Official Teacher of Jewish Theology in Prague.”33 The ambition of maskilim and reformist officials to regulate the production of rabbis in the Bohemian Lands never fully materialized, however, and—unlike in Budapest and Vienna—a modern rabbinical seminary was never established in Prague. For much of the first half of the century, the Prague rabbinical court (headed from 1826 to 1834 by Samuel Landau, son of the former chief rabbi, Ezekiel Landau [1713–93]) and the community’s more conservative lay leaders managed to head off any such development. Government officials in Vienna and Prague, meanwhile, seem to have been content to establish standards of cultural integration for rabbis in the Bohemian Lands in the form of minimum levels of Western education as a supplement to traditional rabbinic training. Along these lines, an imperial decree of 1834 ruled that, henceforth, no person could be installed as a rabbi who had not completed gymnasium and university studies at a domestic institution.34 Even this intervention would not settle the question of the modern rabbi, however, as the state would face pressure over the coming decades to retreat from its absolutist stance to consider contingencies, dispensations, and exceptions. The most famous dispensation from the general requirement of university education paired with yeshiva training accompanied the appointment of Solomon Judah Rapoport (1790–1867) as rabbi of Prague and head of the rabbinical court (Av bet din) in 1840. Rapoport, a native of Lemberg (Lwów), was known to combine traditional Jewish learning with modern, critical scholarship, but he was largely self-taught in Western humanities and did not hold a university degree. A petition to the governor’s office in 1838 to validate his appointment was rejected, but the mayor of Prague—won over, apparently, by the personal qualities and demeanor of the candidate—recommended that he be appointed despite the lack of a “Latin diploma.” Prague community leaders had argued that it was often impossible to merge yeshiva with university studies and that Rapoport’s self-education in the humanities should be acceptable. “The saintly [Moses] Mendelssohn,” the community officers noted, “if he were still alive and a local resident, would by strict adherence to the letter of the law never be able to receive a rabbinical position in Bohemia.”35 In the end, on December 28, 1839, Emperor Ferdinand (1793–1875) signed a special dispensation for Rapoport: “I shall graciously overlook his not being a native [of Bohemia] and the lack of university credentials.”36 Other rabbis received dispensation, too, as the government maintained a policy of approving the vast majority of Kreisrabbiner, or district rabbis, without the required university degree. Carsten Wilke attributes the continued tolerance of nonacademic qualifications among the Bohemian

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rabbinate to the peculiar demographic profile of the province: the dispersal of the Jewish population outside Prague among scores of small villages. There simply were not enough rabbis, cantors, teachers, and ritual slaughterers to go around.37 Not all traditional Jewish learning in the Bohemian Lands shunned secular subjects or critical approaches to Jewish texts. Baruch Jeitteles (1762–1813) ran a private yeshiva in Prague in the early nineteenth century, incorporating language study and mathematics into its curriculum. Samuel Brod (1771–1852), who established a yeshiva in Polná, gave instruction, in German, on the writings of earlier Jewish theologians and provided his students with a “higher,” critical perspective on the Talmud and its commentaries. And at Aaron Kornfeld’s yeshiva in Goltsch-Jenikau (Golčův Jeníkov), which operated from 1813 to 1843, traditional Talmudic dialectic continued to be cultivated, and students also had the freedom to study medieval religious philosophy and even non-Jewish literature. Isaac Mayer Wise (1819–1900), who later became a leading Reform rabbi in the United States, notes in his autobiography that it was considered laudable to have read Schiller, Goethe, Lessing, and others.38 Such seemingly unproblematic blending of old and new was especially prevalent in Moravia. Here the still-vibrant and popu lar yeshivot of the 1820s, 1830s, and 1840s were sufficiently self-confident that they did not fear the modest incorporation of modern approaches to the study of Jewish texts. The memoirs of Isaac Hirsch Weiss (1815–1905), who would go on to become an important scholar of rabbinic literature in Vienna, attest to the incorporation of new pedagogical methods in the ḥadarim of his native province. In most of these traditional Jewish elementary schools, Weiss reports, teachers rendered the Hebrew Bible into German using Mendelssohn’s translation of the Torah—the very text that Ezekiel Landau and the conservative rabbinate of Prague had prevented from becoming part of the Normalschule curriculum. The innovative founder of a new, upper-level ḥeder in Weiss’s hometown of Gross-Meseritsch (Velké Meziříčí)— dedicated to the study of Talmud—stressed student selfsufficiency and a philological approach to the rabbinic text grounded in the earlier rabbinic opus, the Mishnah, a close reading of the commentary of R. Solomon ben Isaac (Rashi, 1040–1105) and the later Tosafists. For one hour a day, students were taught the Hebrew Bible with Mendelssohn’s translation, Rashi’s commentary, and the Mendelssohnian commentary, the Bi’ur. Equally unusual for a traditional curriculum, two hours a week were devoted to Hebrew grammar, using the text of a contemporary Hebrew grammarian.39 In 1829–30 Weiss began advanced Talmud studies in Trebitsch (Třebíč), where the young yeshiva director Joachim Pollak (1798–1879) emphasized the plain meaning of the text, grounded in grammar and philology, taught Talmudic narrative

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(Aggadah) as well as law, and reserved at least two hours a week for the study of the Hebrew Bible and its commentators.40 Prossnitz, Moravia’s second-largest Jewish community and the hub of the region’s textile industry, was also the site of a successful and much sought-after yeshiva headed by Moses Katz Wanefried (d. 1850), which attracted students from Hungary and Poland as well as the Bohemian Lands. Students at Wanefried’s academy—including Adolf Jellinek, whom we encountered at the start of the chapter—absorbed an environment that was at least open to secular studies and found, in the homes of such local residents as Jacob Steinschneider (1781–1856) and Gideon Brecher (1797–1873), places to engage in the reading of Hebrew literature, works in modern and classical languages, and German-Jewish newspapers, such as the Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums and, later, Der Orient.41 Löw Schwab (1794–1857), who became rabbi of Prossnitz in 1832, had introduced modest reforms into its synagogue ritual, including sermons delivered in German and the banning of outdoor wedding ceremonies as indecorous. Such modernizing practices were strongly opposed by Schwab’s predecessor as rabbi of Prossnitz, Chief Rabbi of Moravia Nehemias Trebitsch (1779–1842), who was known to have vigorously opposed the appointment of other reform-minded rabbis in his territory. Trebitsch could, however, accommodate a certain amount of cultural adaptation. He supported teaching the Bible to children using Mendelssohn’s German translation, for example, and he gave his approbation to a translation into Hebrew of the Greek writings of Philo of Alexandria. Students at his yeshiva in Nikolsburg (Mikulov), among them Isaac Hirsch Weiss, frequently went on to study in grammar schools and universities.42 A small number of activists within the Prague Jewish community made sporadic efforts, beginning with Peter Beer in 1820, toward the establishment of modern synagogue ritual in the Bohemian capital, which would include prayers in German (alongside Hebrew as the dominant language), Germanlanguage sermons, organ music, male choirs, and—equally impor tant, from their perspective—order and decorum. All efforts in this direction, however, were met with strong opposition from Prague’s rabbinical court—led by Eleazar Fleckeles until his death in 1826, and thereafter by Ezekiel Landau’s son Samuel—which was able to deter the Bohemian Gubernium from approving any such liturgical reform for a decade or more. It was not until 1832 that a group of wealthy merchants, industrialists, and intellectuals came together to form the Association for the Improvement of Jewish Religious Worship (Verein zur Verbesserung des israelitischen religiösen Kultus), whose first meeting was attended by fifty-four communal dignitaries—including Samuel Landau’s nephew Moses (M.  I. Landau). The Verein requested of the city that it assign the Old Synagogue (Altschul) for renovation and rededication as the

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“ Temple,” and asked permission to hire a Prediger, a rabbi in the modern style, who combined Jewish and secular education.43 The original hope of the economic elite who made up the Verein had been to time the dedication of the new Prague temple to coincide with the fortieth anniversary (August 9, 1832) of the coronation of Emperor Francis II as king of Bohemia (and Hungary and Croatia). But negotiations with the Prague Jewish community, whose leading rabbi, Samuel Landau, continued to oppose the enterprise, proved difficult. It was only following the death of Landau in 1834 that plans for the temple could move ahead. The still-unrenovated Altschul was transmitted to the Verein in January 1835 and was officially dedicated the following month in a ceremony presided over by Prague native Zacharias Frankel (1801–75), who was later to direct the famous Jewish Theological Seminary in Breslau, an institution connected to the conservative, historical wing of Jewish religious reform. The first person to be hired as Prediger of the Altschul synagogue was the scholar Leopold Zunz (1794–1886), who held the position for only a year; he was succeeded by Michael Sachs (1808–64), who occupied the position from 1836 to 1844 (when he left for a similar appointment in Berlin), and then, for many years, by Saul Isaac Kaempf (1818–92).44

Education, Religious Culture, and Gender Like the enterprising young men who might receive both traditional rabbinic training and exposure to modern, Western languages, literature, philosophy, and science, Jewish young women in the Bohemian Lands followed a variety of paths to obtain their education. Bohemia and Moravia each had one German Jewish school for girls; and there is reason to believe, from the annual reports of the early to mid-nineteenth century, that girls and boys studied together in smaller communities.45 In addition, many Jewish girls in bourgeois households were educated privately by tutors, particularly in European languages and literatures but probably also in traditional Jewish subjects.46 One source that speaks directly to the question of the education of Jewish girls in the Bohemian Lands (and beyond) is the postscript that Fanny Neuda (1819–94) appended to her remarkable collection of prayers for Jewish women, Stunden der Andacht, published in Prague in 1854 by the Pascheles publishing house, with numerous subsequent editions.47 There had of course been earlier collections of prayers for Jewish women, but these had all been written by men—including the most recent example, composed by Meir Letteris (1800–1871) and published by Pascheles under the Hebrew and German title Taḥanune bat yehudah (in Hebrew characters): Ein Gebet- und Erbauungsbuch für israelitische Frauenzimmer (1846). “This is the first time,” Wolf Pascheles proclaimed in his foreword to Stunden der An-

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dacht, “that a highly educated woman appears as the author of a prayer book for weekdays, holidays, and fasts as they touch upon all circumstances of a woman’s life.”48 He continued, “The author of this prayer book has demonstrated that a woman is the best interpreter of the female heart; partakes of the same rich experience, self-feeling, all the characteristics of women; understands the female heart and fully satisfies its pious needs.”49 Neuda’s postscript, addressed to “the noble mothers and wives in Israel,” added a highly personal and original tone to the work. It concerned itself first and foremost with the education of one’s daughters, which she considered to be critical for the development of human culture and well-being.50 Neuda, the widow of Abraham Neuda (1812– 54)—a moderately modernizing rabbi in the Moravian community of Loschitz (Loštice) until his death at the age of forty-two—was in many ways a conventional, middle-class woman; hardly a protofeminist. She accepted for the most part the gendered division of labor in the economy and the family. A good marriage and the careful raising of children continued to comprise for her the ultimate goals of a woman’s life. The originality of her thinking truly breaks through in her depictions of a mother’s role in directing her children’s education—a “meaningful sphere of work,” whose effects “stretch over entire generations and lineages”—as well as in her design for a Jewish curriculum for girls.51 Jewish mothers, Neuda argued, played a crucial part in the planning and execution of their daughters’ religious education, but also in the development of what can only be called ethnic pride. Jewish mothers, she lamented, were not paying sufficient attention to the cultivation of their daughters’ religious sensibilities: “That which glows and glitters is cultivated, but the heart, with all its blossoms and sprouts, is tended to thoughtlessly. . . . The lessons of religion are dealt with only incidentally, only as a formality and trifle. Yet the nobility of feeling and profound religiosity are a woman’s highest jewel.”52 Neuda linked the promotion of religious sentiment to Jewish knowledge, and both to heightened ethnic self-awareness. The first duty of Jewish mothers, she urged, must be to attend to the education of their daughters to promote “self-sacrificing attachment to [their] Volk and glowing love for humanity.” Clearly, mothers had to accompany their daughters to synagogue, to absorb together the singing and the prayers. But, Neuda added, for this not to be an external, meaningless experience of sound and music, one was obligated to teach girls to read and understand Hebrew. Without this knowledge, she suggested, “we hear only words but no speech.”53 One can infer a good deal from Neuda’s discussion of the neglect of Hebrew and religious studies regarding both the educational curriculum and the social and artistic cultivation of Jewish girls in bourgeois households. Jewish daughters, Neuda complained, devoted most of their time to learning to play the piano, to

Figure 11. No contemporaneous portrait of Fanny Neuda has been preserved. Respekt a tolerance (Respect and Tolerance), an organization that looks after the synagogue in Loschitz, where Neuda’s husband served as rabbi, commissioned an idealized portrait of her by Richard Štipl in 2011. © Respect and Tolerance.

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sing operas, and to speak foreign languages, which, she added, were required by the fashions and customs of the times. Why not also devote one hour a day to learning the language of scripture, she asked, lyrically describing Hebrew as the mother of all languages, the key to the treasures of the spirit and of the heart; the language that united Jews the world over, from Tunis to Warsaw; the language through which God once addressed his people at Sinai?54 Clearly, Neuda’s attachment to the Hebrew language derived in part from a desire to promote religious piety among Jewish women and girls, but one also senses in her writing a deep attachment to Jewish ethnic identity and a conviction that the role of women was central in fostering this feeling. “Genuine, female religiosity,” she wrote, pairs itself with “elevated national feeling [erhebendes Nationalgefühl].” Neuda employed four different terms within a single paragraph to refer to Jewish identity: Volk, Nation, Stamm, and Israelit; establishing no clear distinctions among them; suggesting, rather, that she considered the terms to be interchangeable. Our daughters need to learn to carry the name “Israelite” with pride; they need to recognize the inner worth of their Volk, and be made aware of the fact that it would be a denial of their own self-worth to feel ashamed of belonging to a Stamm—one, Neuda concludes, that “is as great as any in history, whose pages are rich with illustrious heroes, noble men, and self-sacrificing martyrs.”55 Fanny Neuda’s “Word to the Noble Mothers and Wives in Israel” deserves to be seen as a central cultural document of the Jewish nineteenth century, a call for female Bildung based squarely on Jewish spiritual and ethnic foundations.

Unequal Mobility: Patterns of, and Barriers to, Integration The University and the Wider World If the decades that stretched from 1790 to 1860 were ones of hesitancy and indecision on the part of Habsburg, Bohemian, and Moravian officials—uncertain about what the political status of Jews was, what legal rights they possessed, and what their cultural profile ought to be—the same cannot be said of Jewish society itself. The Jewish communities of Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia might continue to be divided between religious traditionalists and reformists of various stripes (including those who rejected rabbinic authority altogether), but the basic patterns of cultural integration had been put in place. These were not going to be reversed, though they would undergo shifts in emphasis and direction. Crucially for the women and men whose mental universes had been altered by the profound cultural and educational transformations of the period, their expectations for social mobility—for greater integration into Bohemian,

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Moravian, and Silesian society—also grew. Jews who were speaking High German and discovering literary Czech, who feasted on Schiller and learned the tales of Libuše, who were investing in textile mills and engaging in wholesale trade, would not be content to limit their social ambitions and interactions to the confines of the Jewish quarter. Increasingly, Jews would set their sights on the world beyond the Jewish street, beyond the Bohemian village or Moravian town, to the gymnasium and the university, the larger cities and towns of the empire, and even to high society. The combination of rapid cultural change and limited social integration— the education for citizenship hemmed in by continued legal inequality— produced an unsurprising psychological response: disappointment marked by conflict and struggle. One can see this in the careers of the first generation of gymnasium- and university-educated Jewish males who came of age in the 1840s: individuals such as Moritz Hartmann (1821–72), Siegfried Kapper (1821–79), Leopold Kompert (1822–86), Isidor Heller (1816–79), and the brothers Adolf and Hermann Jellinek.56 These individuals took various paths on the way to secondary and higher education. Kompert attended the German-Jewish school in Müchengrätz (Mnichovo Hradiště) before being sent by his father, a wool merchant, to an institution that will appear numerous times in this short survey: the Piarist gymnasium in Jungbunzlau (Mladá Boleslav).57 Isidor Heller, who was born in Jungbunzlau, was apparently groomed to be a talmudic scholar and studied simultaneously in the gymnasium and the yeshiva. We do not have precise information concerning his earlier education, so we do not know if he attended only a traditional ḥeder or also the local Trivialschule. But this would not have been an unusual pattern; we do know that Adolf Jellinek and his brothers received both kinds of schooling during their early years in Ungarisch Brod (Uherský Brod).58 Moritz Hartmann appears to have made several starts and false turns before ending up, like Kompert and Heller before him, in the Piarist gymnasium in Jungbunzlau. Born in the Czech village of Duschnik (Daleké Dušníky), Hartmann spent short periods of time at a Trivialschule in Breznitz (Březnice), a Hauptschule in Neukollin (Kolín), and the Altstädter Gymnasium in Prague; he also received home tutoring at times. In 1833 he traveled to Jungbunzlau, where his maternal grand father, Isaac Spitz (1766–1842), was rabbi. Boarding at his grandfather’s house, the young Hartmann attended the Piarist gymnasium for the next five years. The Piarists were a Catholic teaching order that operated schools and colleges throughout the Habsburg monarchy, particularly after the dissolution of the Jesuit Order in 1773; their schools attracted the children of middle-class Jewish families, it appears, for two main reasons: They willingly accepted Jewish students, and they did not, as a rule, attempt to convert them.

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Yet the teaching in the schools could be uninspiring and the atmosphere hostile and oppressive. Looking back on his gymnasium years, Hartmann lamented, “How we were robbed of our youths during the Vormärz! For six years, we sat on the gymnasium bench with nothing to do other than lose the most beautiful, fruitful years of our lives . . . For six years, we learned Latin rules by heart without ever having to read a real Latin author; we learned Greek for four years, at the end of which we could not translate two verses of Homer; yet we learned Latin and Greek better than our mother tongue.”59 Jewish students, moreover, found that they had to overcome considerable hostility from teachers and fellow students if they were to succeed in their studies. One of Moritz Hartmann’s teachers, a former Jesuit, was fond of remarking to his class that Jews, rather than studying Latin, should be practicing haggling (Schacher). Moritz, the main character in Leopold Kompert’s novella Die Kinder des Randars (The leaseholder’s children, written in 1847), which bears strong autobiographical features, is subjected to various humiliations at the Jungbunzlau gymnasium. When he arrives to register at the school, the rector pointedly asks the boy’s mother whether she wishes for him to be addressed as “Moses” or as “Moritz.” On the fourth day of school, Moritz is ordered to kneel before the teacher’s desk as punishment for arriving late to class. The boy interprets this act as a religious violation and protests but, in the end, capitulates.60 Siegfried (born Salomon Israel) Kapper, who would gain notoriety in the 1840s as the first modern Jewish writer to publish poetry in the Czech language, grew up in Smichow (Smíchov), on the outskirts of Prague (and thus was not subject to the requirement to live within the Prague ghetto). The eldest of nine children, he received his earliest education, at age five, from his father and in the spirit of the Haskalah. His father, Kapper tells us, taught directly from the Hebrew Bible and used the text as a springboard to other subjects: The creation story led to the rudiments of astronomy, geography, and natu ral science; the story of the Pharaohs led to world history. Presumably, in the Kapper household Enlightenment rationalism coexisted unproblematically with folk culture of various kinds, from the Jewish stories told by a mendicant musician to the Czech folktales and songs of the street. Kapper received his first formal schooling at a two-grade, bilingual (Czech and German) Volksschule in Smichow. For the next two years, he attended a Jewish school (presumably private) that met at the Klaus Synagogue in Prague, where, we are told, Kapper learned Hebrew and “perfected his German.”61 He entered the Piarist gymnasium in Prague’s Kleinseite (Malá Strana) in 1830, where he would spend six formative years. During his last two years, Kapper studied with the writer and poet Johannes Zimmermann. It so happened that the Kleinseite gymnasium played a key role during this time in the elaboration of romantically inspired Czech cultural nationalism. Václav

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Svoboda (1813–88), one of its most influential teachers, had almost certainly aided the philologist Václav Hanka (1791–1861) in 1817 in the preparation of the controversial literary forgeries known as the Dvůr Králové (Königinhof) and Zelená Hora (Grünberg) manuscripts, which purported to comprise examples of poetry written in Old Czech, thus attesting to the antiquity of Czech language and culture.62 For many young Jewish men, the road from the local Jewish community to the larger world led through the gymnasium to the university, and seemed inevitably to have included a break with the traditional culture of their childhood surroundings. Moritz Hartmann recounted this break in poignant fashion. Hartmann, we recall, had been sent to Jungbunzlau to attend gymnasium because he would be able to live there under the same roof as his grandfather, Isaac Spitz, the local rabbi, described by Hartmann’s biographer as pious but not dogmatic, a worldly man and a bit of a poet.63 Hartmann seems to have admired his grandfather and may even have used him as a model for sympathetic Jewish characters in his work. But he soon broke from the religious environment of his grandfather’s house. He was fond of recounting an episode that took place when he was thirteen years old, in which he took a walk in the woods and, ostentatiously, tossed his newly acquired pair of phylacteries (tefillin) into the trees.64 In the case of Siegfried Kapper, it was his father who already had moved far beyond the confines of the traditional Jewish community, both literally and figuratively. Joseph Kapper was listed in official registers as a peddler (Hausierer), but Siegfried Kapper reveals in an unpublished autobiographical essay that his father’s career was considerably more interest ing than might other wise have been suspected. For besides a peddler, Joseph Kapper was also, at different times in his life, an artisan, a soldier in the French army, and a teacher at various Swiss institutions (under the name Fischer). Just what provoked such a wide-roaming career for this Smichow native is not clear, but it may have been a byproduct of the restrictive Familiants Laws—still in effect before 1848. Siegfried Kapper suggests as much when he writes that his father learned the craft of glassmaking upon his return to Bohemia in order to be allowed to marry and start a family.65 Adolf and Hermann Jellinek both completed yeshiva studies in Prossnitz before setting their sights on the university and the big city. For the two brothers the obvious target was Prague, with Adolf arriving in 1838 and Hermann a year later. The two Jellineks arrived in the Bohemian capital as bocherim: Neither had formally attended gymnasium and neither had sufficient wealth to devote themselves full time to self-education. Thus, like scores of other young men in a similar position, Adolf and Hermann Jellinek endeavored to make a living as private tutors, the very class of wandering young men against whom people like

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Johann Wanniczek had railed as enemies of the Normalschule. Their example should give pause to hasty generalizations about the cultural and intellectual makeup of bocherim as a group or of their role in the education of middle-class Jewish children in the Bohemian Lands. The Jellinek brothers were in Prague as a first step in engaging more intimately with Central European society; they may have emerged from the institutions of traditional Jewish learning, but they were hardly likely to try to impress upon their young charges the ideal of a Jewish culture closed to the outside world.66 The elder brother seems to have had the easier time of it, receiving both financial and moral support from his father (who was not in favor of his second son’s studies in Prague). For Adolf Jellinek, the years 1838 to 1842 were spent tutoring the children of the banker Adolf (Aron) Rosenbacher, studying gymnasium subjects privately while attending the odd lecture at the university, listening to the German-language sermons of Rabbi Michael Sachs at Prague’s Altschul—but also to shiurim (lectures on the Talmud) by Solomon Judah Rapoport.67 Hermann Jellinek’s financial difficulties, by contrast, forced him to take on so many private students that he had virtually no time for any other activities. Distressed and in poor health, he made his way to Leipzig in Saxony (at first illegally), determined to enter the university there while continuing to eke out a living as a private tutor. At the University of Leipzig, Hermann Jellinek studied philosophy—notably the writings of Hegel and Feuerbach—history, natu ral history, and political economy. It was during this time that he broke from traditional Jewish belief and practice—consequently coming into conflict not only with the chief rabbi of Dresden at the time, Zacharias Frankel, but also with his father and his brother Adolf—and began to engage in the kind of radical politics that would eventually get him expelled from the kingdom of Saxony and propel him to political and journalistic activism during the 1848 Revolution in Vienna. Adolf, by contrast, followed the more conventional course. Armed with a letter of recommendation from Solomon Judah Rapoport, he arrived in Leipzig a year after Hermann, enrolled in the university, and completed an intensive course of studies in philosophy, philology, and oriental languages.68 What stands out most about Jewish men seeking social mobility through university education in the 1840s is how haphazard and difficult the process was. There was no natural pipeline leading from Normalschule to gymnasium to university. Many Jews had to improvise a path to higher education, pasting together a course of study from diverse sources, sometimes skipping the Normalschule altogether, sometimes the gymnasium. Often young Jewish males from the Bohemian Lands had to achieve their goal away from home, in Leipzig or Vienna or beyond. Siegfried Kapper, Moritz Hartmann, Leopold Kompert,

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and Isidor Heller all arrived in Prague between 1837 and 1840; all enrolled at the university; and all left within a few years.69 Prague could not contain these young writers and intellectuals. As with the Jellineks, financial pressures forced most to seek outside employment as private tutors—interrupting their studies for longer or shorter periods—but the main reason appears to have been dissatisfaction: dissatisfaction with the university and impatience with Prague as a provincial city. Another characteristic of this generation was movement: Wanderlust and quest, next to poetry and politics, constituted major themes in the lives of these young writers and intellectuals. Moritz Hartmann might have left Prague altogether in 1838 in favor of Leipzig, where censorship laws were much less stringent, were it not for the fact that he could not obtain a residence permit. He finally made his way to the imperial capital, Vienna, in 1840, where he attended the university, shared a room for a while with another Jewish student from Prague, David Kuh (1818–79), wrote for several periodicals, and, in 1842, began a trip that took him to Trieste, Venice, Switzerland, Munich, and back to Vienna. For two years he managed to hold the position of tutor (Hofmeister) in the house of Prince Schwarzenberg, but eventually gave this up as well, making his way back to Leipzig in search of a publisher for his by now considerable collection of poetry. From there he proceeded to Brussels, where he oversaw the publication (in Leipzig) of his first book of poems, Kelch und Schwert (Chalice and sword). He spent some time in Paris and Germany and then returned to Bohemia in 1847, where the following year he was put on trial for some political writings just as the 1848 revolutions broke out.70 The travels of other Jewish students from Bohemia were no less impressive, and both the Austrian and Hungarian capitals feature prominently. Isidor Heller did not return to Prague until 1838, after his application to join the French Foreign Legion was turned down by the commander in Nancy. He later lived in Vienna as a teacher; edited a literary journal, Der Ungar (The Hungarian), in Pest; left Pest in 1847 after an unhappy romance; converted quietly to Protestantism; moved to Leipzig, where he wrote short stories and political articles; and returned to Pest at the end of March 1848 to edit a new political journal, Der Morgenröthe (The dawn).71 Siegfried Kapper managed to complete two years of humanities by the summer of 1839 but went on to enroll in the faculty of medicine at the urging of his father. By now, however, he had reached a dead end in the Bohemian capital, forced to devote all his time to private tutoring. His luck was no better the next year, even though he managed to inherit Hartmann’s position with the wealthy Mauthner family. And so, in the autumn of 1841, we find Kapper, too, in Vienna, where he made a valiant effort to resume medical

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studies. For the next six years, he lived a rather sedentary existence and finally received the medical degree in 1847. After 1848, however, he left once more, traveling and working for years in Serbia, Croatia, and the Banat.72 Leopold Kompert put up with university life in Prague for less than a year (1838) before also escaping to Vienna. There he found a position as a tutor to a wealthy merchant with five children, a job which, while improving his material circumstances, made it impossible for him to continue his formal studies. It did, however, give him some time to devote to poetry and fiction. Kompert’s Wanderjahre began in 1840, when he boarded a ship on the Danube, lived for a while in villages on the Hungarian plain, and eventually made his way to Pressburg (Pozsony, today’s Bratislava), where he befriended the publisher of the Pressburger Zeitung, Adolf Neustadt (1812–75). Publishing his first stories in Neustadt’s Pressburger Zeitung and L. A. Frankl’s (1810–94) Sonntagsblätter, Kompert also signed on as tutor to the children of Count Andrássy. It was not until 1847, after learning of the death of his mother, that he decided to resume university study.73 The peripatetic lives of upwardly mobile, intellectually ambitious, and artistically or politically inclined Jewish men from the Bohemian Lands speak to some salient social realities and their psychological effects. One could leave behind the villages of one’s grandparents or the small towns of one’s youth; one could learn to write German like Schiller, throw one’s tefillin into the woods, or seek to blend Voltaire with Maimonides; but where was one to find the social arena in which one could realize one’s ambitions? Where could one be admitted to, and afford the cost of, university? Where could one write? Would one’s social universe continue to be bounded by the geography of the ghetto? For a certain segment of Jewish society—precisely the segment that had most internalized the Josephinian reforms—Prague stifled all ambition. How Secure the Ghetto Walls? The formal, legally delineated, Jewish quarter of Prague—geographically mapped out and separated by physical barriers from the rest of the city—was the only ghetto, in the true sense of the word, in Bohemia, though Moravia too had several “closed Jewish towns” that functioned in the same way. Until the Revolution of 1848, Jews were prohibited by law from residing outside the ghetto walls, but this prohibition could be circumvented in several ways. Jews who engaged in wholesale trade or who established factories could receive a Privilegium, granting them legal permission to live in the Christian parts of the city. This group included many of the Jewish elites of the early to mid-nineteenth century and their families: the Porges (von Portheim), Dormitzer, Jerusalem (von Salemfels),

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Lämel, Przibram, Zdekauer, and Lederer clans, among others.74 Moreover, the boundaries of the Prague Judenstadt were enlarged in 1811, bringing another six hundred or so Jews into legal habitation with Christian neighbors. Other Jews simply rented dwellings in Christian neighborhoods without having first received permission from the Bohemian governor or the Prague municipality.75 The presence of this second type of inner-urban Jewish migrant frequently occasioned protests from Christian neighbors to the municipal authorities, protests which, in some cases, resulted in removal and, in others, inaction or delay. But even Jewish families that were “privileged” to live outside the ghetto walls often had to contend with various forms of economic and social antagonism. Archival documents from the 1830s reveal just how difficult it was in fact to maintain the Judenstadt as a bounded, self-contained entity. Upwardly mobile Jews felt that they could not wait for official permission to seek roomier, healthier accommodations. Economic competitors, city officials, and supervisors in the Prague Gubernium in principle opposed such unregulated migration. But they were often inconsistent in their responses to it. As Věra Leininger relates, a person identifying himself as “Joseph Schöpfkes” submitted a report in 1833 to the Bohemian Gubernium naming numerous Jews who were living illegally in the Christian parts of the city even though their removal had been formally requested. The petitioner complained that wealthy Jews were allowing their homes in the Jewish Town to become dilapidated, while the poor could not afford to keep up their homes; both the wealthy and the poor, as a result, were moving into Christian neighborhoods. The upwardly mobile Jews, however, were leaving behind their religious obligations to the poor, thereby creating a greater financial burden on the formal Jewish community of the ghetto. The Gubernium responded by instructing the Prague magistrates to issue a warning to the writer of the complaint, because he had failed to follow proper procedure in making his report. Moreover, it could find no record of any person under whose name the complaint had originally been filed.76 Prague’s municipal authorities often reacted to the unauthorized presence of Jews in the Christenstadt by threatening to punish them with monetary fines and to remove them forcibly from their residences. Scores of Jews, meanwhile, both individually and collectively, presented the city and the Gubernium with pleas to be granted special permission to live in Christian neighborhoods, often citing the stifling lack of space and unhealthy living conditions of the Jewish quarter—where a cholera epidemic raged in 1831–32—as grounds for migration.77 Typically, requests of this type were unsuccessful. Responding to a petition from Israel Mauthner, a supplier of raw materials to cotton printers in Prague, who had moved to the city from Horschitz (Hořice) and had requested

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permission to live in the Christenstadt—in part because of the ill health of his five children—the Stadthauptmannschaft (captaincy, attached to the Gubernium) was unmoved. Noting that Mauthner was neither a factory-owner nor a wholesale merchant, the official added that there was plenty of room in the expanded Jewish quarter to find healthy accommodations. Not long after, Prague’s magistrates reversed themselves and decided to approve Mauthner’s request, prompting the Gubernium to step in and once again threaten the merchant with removal. And yet no action was taken for several years. Finally, in 1837, the court chancery in Vienna awarded Mauthner the right to buy a house on the Langegasse for the purpose of setting up a factory.78 Not all Prague burghers opposed Jewish settlement in the Christian town. Appealing to the “humanity” of the magistrates, nine property owners in 1834 urged that the unauthorized Jewish inhabitants be neither expelled nor fined. The landlords praised the “solidarity” and “cleanliness” of the Jewish renters; noted that they paid their rents on time; and worried that their properties might remain vacant if the Jews were to be removed.79 One cannot be certain exactly how many Jews lived outside the Jewish Town before 1848. Leininger has identified approximately 282 Jewish families who lived in the Christenstadt between 1832 and 1834, in addition to some 207 families who resided in the expanded district of 1811. The official numbers were considerably lower; the actual numbers, probably higher.80 It is difficult to estimate how many individuals lived in each household, but, if one accepts six as a reasonable number of family members and servants, one can presume that nearly 1,700 Jews lived in the Christian town in the early 1830s and 1,242 in the expanded Jewish district: this, in addition to the population of the formal Jewish ghetto. It is tempting to view the twenty or so families that made up the Jewish upper bourgeoisie of industrialists and wholesale merchants—those who resided outside the Judenstadt by virtue of special privileges—as people cut off from the traditional Jewish community; their sights set on full-scale integration into Christian society; identifying wholeheartedly with German culture and political power; happy to accept privileges that the rest of Jewish society lacked; and unwilling to challenge the Habsburg state regarding its Jewish policies. But Martina Niedhammer’s research into the Lebenswelten of this group challenges these assumptions. She paints a portrait of an assured social group, united by strong collective bonds and a clear sense of noblesse oblige, who were not afraid to confront their antagonists both economically and politically. The Jewish upper bourgeoisie, moreover, may have spoken primarily German in their daily lives, but this does not mean that they uniformly identified with German political hegemony in the Bohemian Lands. On the contrary, many expressed what Niedhammer calls “heterogeneous national loyalties,” reflecting

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the reigning cultural pluralism and Landespatriotismus of the Vormärz period in general.81 Physically the members of the Jewish upper bourgeoisie had left the Judenstadt far behind, long before the granting of free movement and settlement in 1848. But their attachment to it—and its institutions—remained strong. Some of the wealthy Jews, as we have seen, were among the founders of the temple association and agitated for moderate religious reform; others, like the Przibrams, favored traditional Orthodoxy. But all identified with the Prague Jewish community as “place,” and with Judaism as a vibrant faith. Nor is it fair to say that the wealthy families pursued social advancement and cultural integration at all costs. Despite their professed loyalty to the imperial house, their political relations with Habsburg authorities were not without conflict; some members of the group were not shy in their criticisms of Habsburg policies toward the Jewish population. Thus members of this social and economic elite possessed multiple and complex identities and took pains to integrate various loyalties. They remained solidly grounded in Prague—as a Jewish space and a larger metropolis—and attached to its varied cultural forms and expressions.

Citizenship and Revolution In July 1844 the German-language Jewish newspaper Der Orient published an article written by its Prague correspondent on political developments in Austria. In terse, bitter language the anonymous correspondent underscored the incongruousness of a political situation in which select, wealthy Jews were granted “privileges” (Vorrechte)—for example, to buy houses in which to live outside the Jewish quarter—while the vast majority of Jews still lacked basic rights (Rechte). It should be obvious, the writer observed, just how insulting such privilege—granted to just a few individuals—was to the Jews as a collective. How was it, he asked, that the ban on the acquisition of Christian houses outside the Jewish quarter—once considered to be virtually sacrosanct—could so casually be lifted? It was, he answered, apparently by means of a peculiar kind of emancipation, which he dubbed a Geld-Emancipation, an emancipation by money. In this transaction, the Austrian state offered a small segment of the Jewish population an ersatz emancipation based on financial considerations even as it refused to abolish most discriminatory legislation, such as the Jewish tax, or allow for freedom of movement and occupation. Financial considerations thus trumped religious principle and historical practice, just as the same considerations managed to lift a small portion of the Jewish community out of

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its pre-emancipation state into as-yet uncharted legal, social, and economic waters.82 What Jews in the Bohemian Lands were seeking was equal treatment under law: an end to discriminatory laws against Jews, to special “Jewish taxes,” limits on the right to marry and start a family, own property, move about the kingdom, or choose an occupation. Later in the decade many Jews would join forces with students, urban middle-class radicals, artisans, and peasants in rebellion against the monarchy, demanding a written constitution and representative government. It was in the context of the Revolution of 1848’s agitation for constitutional government and political participation that Jews and their supporters also demanded full citizenship rights—that is, political equality. Jewish emancipation, as it became known in the nineteenth century, could mean different things to different people, supporters and opponents alike. For our purposes, I would suggest that emancipation was meant to comprise a significant transformation in legal and political status: from exceptional treatment to legal equality; from self-government and special jurisdiction to full inclusion in the general polity; and from foreigner to citizen. In cultural terms emancipation entailed the transformation from outsider to insider; in the social context, it promised integration and inclusion. Stretching, with starts and stops, from 1841 to 1867, the path to full legal equality for the Jews of Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia was anything but smooth. And the continuation of distinctions between the legal treatment of Jews in Bohemia and those in Moravia-Silesia further added to the sense of confusion and lack of process. The Familiants Laws, for example, had been more strictly enforced in Moravia than in neighboring Bohemia; and, in 1841, when the Systemalpatent of 1797 (which also only applied to Bohemia) was modified, it became easier for Jews in Bohemia without familiants numbers to procure marriage licenses, and allowed Jews who had distinguished themselves in manufacturing, industry, or ser vice to the state to purchase homes outside the Judenstadt. Jews were even permitted to acquire agricultural land if they (or other Jews) worked it themselves. Again, these reforms applied only to Bohemia.83 The much-despised “Jewish tax” (Judensteuer) was phased out by imperial decree in Bohemia in 1846, but, again, Jews in Moravia continued to be burdened by special taxation until 1848.84 The Revolution of 1848—which spread throughout the Habsburg monarchy, articulating both social and political demands on the ruling authorities— produced uneven results for Jews in the Bohemian Lands. The constitutional document that was being considered by the revolutionary parliament in April would have established freedom of religion and conscience, the right of Jews to

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acquire property and to practice any trade or occupation, and full equality under the law. The imposed constitution of 1849, meanwhile, while much more reserved regarding Jewish rights, nevertheless proclaimed the equality of Jews and Christians in matters of public and private law. And although the constitution was revoked in December 1851, the principles of the free practice of religion and equality under the law (with some exceptions) appear to have been maintained in practice, with no new restrictions being placed on Jews.85 In fact, in the decades following the revocation of the 1849 constitution and before the achievement of formal emancipation, some Jews appear to have enjoyed political rights in their local municipalities. Prominent among these was the merchant David Bernhard Frankl (1820–59), younger brother of the writer Ludwig August Frankl (1810–94), who was elected to the Prague city council in 1850, served as an honorary captain in the civil guard, and was made a citizen of Prague in 1855.86 Imperial decisions in 1860 removed the last remaining barriers to occupational choice and economic activity, to the movement of Jews throughout the monarchy, and to the ownership of most forms of real property. Finally, in 1867, Jews living in the Austrian half of the monarchy received full legal equality.87 The decade of the 1840s, marked by rising expectations for Jewish political equality and social integration, also had its darker side, which manifested itself in the form of riots against Jewish persons and property, born of social tensions produced by incipient industrialization. The riots of June  1844  in Prague and other parts of Bohemia were carried out primarily by textile workers protesting the introduction of mechanization (and the consequent lowering of wages) in the cotton-printing industry. The targets of these protests were in many cases the very Jewish merchants and industrialists who had broken out of the Judenstadt to establish homes and enterprises in the larger city—the Porges family’s cotton-printing plant in Smichow, for example, which employed seven hundred workers in 1843; but also establishments owned by the Dormitzer, Brandeis, Schick, and Epstein families. Within a short time the riots expanded beyond the bounds of economic protest and spilled over into acts of violence against Jews generally. A mass meeting of cotton workers on June 21, at which anti-Jewish speeches were made, was broken up by the police; but it quickly reassembled as a mob that streamed into the Jewish space of the Tandelmarkt (flea market; which was in fact outside the formal Jewish quarter), destroying market stands and shops and attacking individual Jews.88 With the outbreak of revolution in the Habsburg monarchy in March 1848, violence again erupted against Jews in various parts of the country, especially

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Figure 12. Johann Georg Ringlin (Ringle), view of the Prague Tandelmarkt (flea market), with St. Gall Church and the Carmelite monastery, copper engraving, Augsburg, between 1710 and 1756. © Jewish Museum in Prague.

in Hungary and in Bohemia. More than twenty-three towns in Hungary experienced anti-Jewish violence, while in Bohemia extensive rioting occurred in Prague in early May, targeting the Jewish quarter.89 Riots also broke out in Moravia, though on a smaller scale than in either Hungary or Bohemia, despite the fears of Jewish notables there that the events in Hungary were sure to cross the border. An imperial officer prevented a mob from looting the Jewish quarter in Ungarisch Brod in early May and then intervened to prevent violence from breaking out against Jews in nearby villages. A Jewish family was forcibly, and unlawfully, expelled from the Moravian city of Olmütz (Olomouc), together with other Jews who had allegedly engaged in “profiteering” and “speculation.” And residents of Gross-Meseritsch (Velké Meziříčí) rioted in the Jewish Town after Jews were accused of stealing a gold and silver monstrance from the church.90 Events such as the ones described caused alarm among Jewish community leaders while, for Jews in general, they had the effect of cementing the long-standing project of German-Jewish cultural integration. Politically, Jews viewed their best

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hopes for change as resting with democratic liberalism paired with continued loyalty to the monarchy.

Concluding Thoughts: The End of Social and Political Separation? In the decades from 1790 to 1860, the conditions under which Jews in the Bohemian Lands lived their day-to-day lives, the ways in which Jews educated themselves and their children, the languages they spoke, read, and dreamed in, the occupations they chose, their religious behav ior, the places in which they lived and their physical mobility had all changed, often dramatically. There can be little doubt that the long-term effects of these changes had produced Jewish subjects with strong attachments to place, loyalty to the imperial state, and aspirations for economic and social mobility. The benefits of cultural and social integration, both realized and hoped for, seemed obvious to most. In the aftermath of 1848, Jews were exiting from both the physical and symbolic confines of the Judenstädte—the self-contained, autonomous, but segregated Jewish spaces of the monarchy. At times such exiting was indeed performed, as when the Jews of Prague petitioned the authorities in May 1849 to unite the Judenstadt with the rest of the city as its fifth district, to be named Josefstadt (Josefov) in honor of Emperor Joseph II. When this transition was formally approved in 1850, the autonomous Jewish Town came to an end, and the Prague Jewish community was transformed from a political entity into a Kultusgemeinde (náboženská obec).91 It would take another year before the merger came fully into force, and even then, the Prague town hall did its best to limit the areas of the city where Jews could live and trade.92 In principle, all self-governing Jewish communities should have been dissolved after 1848, and in Bohemia all were. Here, too, however, Moravian Jewry constituted a historical anomaly. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, there were fifty-two autonomous Jewish communities in the province that functioned—much like the Jewish Town in Prague—as distinct municipalities. These were supposed to be dissolved in 1849 and incorporated into neighboring Christian towns. Jewish religious communities were to be established in their place to deal with the confessional aspects of Jewish life. Following a spate of anti-Jewish violence in the 1850s, however, the government permitted a certain number of Jewish communities to continue to exist as separate municipalities. Twenty-five Jewish communities eventually were incorporated into the surrounding municipalities, but twenty-seven remained autonomous municipalities and continued to exist until the end of the Habsburg

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Monarchy in 1918.93 The stubbornness with which physical and institutional forms of separation, such as the Prague Jewish Town and the Moravian Jewish political communities, maintained themselves after the revolutionary events of mid-century might be seen as symbolic of other types of resistance to Jewish integration in the Bohemian Lands. In subsequent decades Jews would continue to be regarded by many as foreign and distinct—not quite German, not quite Czech, a force for disorder and even contamination. The emergence of aggressive Czech and German nationalism, of racial ideologies, and of intensified social conflict in the last decades of the nineteenth century would render the quest for Jewish inclusion and acceptance in the Bohemian Lands continuously problematic.

C h apter 4

Contested Equality: Jews in the Bohemian Lands, 1861–1917 Michal Frankl, Martina Niedhammer, and Ines Koeltzsch

In his memoirs after World War I, Šimon Wedeles (later Wels, 1853–1922) fondly recalled his father, Bernard, not least for his extraordinary sense of humor and gift of storytelling. Making his living as a peddler, Bernard Wedeles spent weekdays traveling on foot through small villages in the vicinity of Wosek (Osek), only about two miles from the town of Rokitzan (Rokycany) in west Bohemia. Arriving home exhausted on Friday night, he would stay with his family only on Saturday before leaving for yet another tour, buying and then reselling anything the locals needed and he was able to carry. Yet Šimon did not inherit his father’s heavy sack: His family managed to establish a fabric shop in Wosek. He spent his life mostly in the small, familiar area around Wosek and Rokitzan, where he went to school for several years in his youth and where he retired in 1914.1 Šimon’s son Rudolf (1882–1944) traveled a very different path. After school in Wosek and Rokitzan, he enrolled at the grammar school in Pilsen (Plzeň), the main town of west Bohemia. Soon, he and his sister moved to Prague, where, after completing his military service, he studied architecture at the newly established Czech Technical University. He later continued his training in Vienna. In 1912 he decided to change his family name to Wels which sounded less Jewish. Rudolf took courses from, and later worked with, the now-famous modern architect Adolf Loos, and designed numerous buildings in Bohemia. His life, tragically, ended with a different journey: During the German occupation he was deported from Prague to Theresienstadt and from there to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where—together with his wife and two children—he was murdered in the gas chambers on the night of March 8–9, 1944, with the extermination of the Theresienstadt “ family camp.”2

Map 7. Central Europe circa 1900.

In order to trace key demographic changes in Jewish settlement in the Bohemian Lands, the same twenty-three Jewish communities are shown on the maps throughout this book. The percentage indicates the size of each Jewish community in relation to the total number of Jews in the Bohemian Lands in the period represented. An “x” indicates that no Jewish community existed in that location at the time. For further information on these Jewish communities, see the supplementary essay by Helena Klímová and Lenka Matušíková.

Map 8. Jewish Population of the Bohemian Lands circa 1900 (approx. 147,000).

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Another facet of the Wels family story illustrates the patterns and challenges of Jewish migration in Central Europe in that period. In 1860 Šimon’s sister Roza (remembered by her brother as being both very pretty and averse to manual labor) was persuaded by a family member to join him in the paradise of America. Together with another brother, Josef, she boarded a ship from Bremen on their way to the United States, ultimately to St. Louis. The irregular letters home, always eagerly expected, brought no good news. The first message, six months after their departure, detailed how on the perilous journey a storm took them off course and they spent four months on the ship in hunger and despair. Josef, sent by his parents to America (just after the Second War of Italian Independence, 1859) also to avoid the long mandatory military ser vice in the Austrian army, enlisted with the North during the Civil War and took part in the last battles. On the exhausting march back north after the victory, he contracted pneumonia and died. The period between the emancipation of the Jews in the mid-nineteenth century and the creation of the Czechoslovak nation-state in late 1918 has generally been considered a time of unprecedented economic prosperity and advancement through education, spoiled solely by the occasional hostility of the competing sides of the Czech-German national conflict and by antisemitism. Yet this was actually a time of dramatic change, which should not be teleologically subsumed into a success story or seen as an inevitable process of modernization and migration from villages to towns and major cities, as epitomized by the Wels family or the lives of Hermann Kafka and his son Franz. Jewish modernity in the Bohemian Lands took diverse forms and was a part of the broader transformation of society. This chapter examines the variety of Jewish participation in the process leading toward a more mobile, industrialized, but also politicized and nationalistic society. We explore how these sometimes gradual developments, sometimes rapid and revolutionary changes, took place in the reimagined geographies of Bohemia and Moravia and in the shifting social spaces of emerging modern society, from official emancipation in the 1860s until World War I. The chapter examines the nationalist transformation of society and the growing conflict between Czech and German nationalists, yet also seeks to provide an account without measuring Jews by their alleged successes or failures in assimilating into and displaying loyalty to a modern nation.

Jewish Spaces in Flux “All citizens are equal before the law,” declared the December constitution of 1867 of the Cisleithanian part of Austria-Hungary.3 Since the failed revolutions of 1848–49, a number of decrees and laws had improved the position of the Jews

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in society, yet many others regulated Jewish life in particular and thus maintained the separate legal status of Jews. The revocation of the constitution in December  1851 had kept Jewish equality in a legal limbo. By contrast, the new constitution, based on liberal principles and a universal understanding of citizenship, provided for full civic equality regardless of confession or nationality. It concluded the long process of the gradual extension of the economic, political, social, and spatial rights of Jews in different parts of the  monarchy. After 1867, vestiges of legal inequality—for instance, in marriage law—remained exceptional. What mattered most was the actual implementation of this universal granting of equality and rights together with promised integration. Nevertheless, in contrast to countries of mass Jewish immigration, the overall number of Jews in the Bohemian Lands stagnated in this period, while internal migration dramatically changed the patterns of Jewish settlement. In 1880, of the 147,204 people of Jewish religion counted in the census (1.79 percent of the population), 50.4 percent lived in villages and small towns of fewer than 5,000 inhabitants, and only 26.2 percent lived in cities with a population of more than 50,000. The census of 1910, however, showed the quickly proceeding urbanization of the 140,426 Jews (1.4  percent of the population): The proportion was now almost reversed, with 28.7  percent in small towns and villages compared to 42.7 percent in cities.4 The newly acquired freedom had a clear spatial dimension encompassing migration, but also entailed rewriting the meanings of Jewish space, which was based on more than just familiar locations mostly identical with the “ghettos” and was subject to complex social negotiation and, sometimes, conflict. Such tensions not only stemmed from antisemitism or economic competition, but also reflected different perceptions of social space and cultural expectations linked to places. The experience of discovering and appropriating new spaces was therefore an essential element of emancipation and integration into modern society. Roughly speaking, this process unfolded in three types of space: traditional places of Jewish settlement, existing urban spaces where Jewish residence had previously been forbidden or difficult, and new urban spaces developed in part with Jewish participation. The uninterrupted settlement of Jews in the Bohemian Lands notwithstanding, many communities and spaces had previously been off limits to them. Prague was an exception; the majority of Bohemian and Moravian Jews did not live in large urban centers like Pilsen or Brünn (Brno) until the second half of the nineteenth century. Smaller Jewish communities dotted the countryside and often had few members. In fact, some places were populated by only one or two Jewish families, and they had to go to a neighboring village to attend synagogue. Due to migration abroad or to larger cities, these tiny communities, which had

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been characteristic of the Bohemian Jewish landscape for centuries, gradually disappeared. Synagogues were abandoned and often sold. This was what happened, for example, in Neu Zedlisch (Nové Sedliště).5 A small village in west Bohemia, not far from Tachau (Tachov) and surrounded by small Jewish communities, Neu Zedlisch in the mid-nineteenth century was home to a flourishing rural Jewish community. Constituting almost a third of the population, the community was well organized and wealthy enough to build a new synagogue in 1787, maintain a cemetery, and administer charities. In about 1900 some of the nearby communities joined Neu Zedlisch, whereas others became part of the Tachau community. But even this could not prevent the decline: In 1914, when only seven Jewish families remained, the official community organization was dissolved and its members were integrated into the community in Tachau. The synagogue, once the pride of the local Jews, was torn down in 1918, because its future use as a place of worship was considered unlikely. In the twenty-five years before World War I, seven rural Jewish communities had disappeared from the map of Jewish Bohemia just in the area of Neu Zedlisch. Nevertheless, while traditional communities vanished, new Jewish spaces were carved out. Many royal boroughs and mining towns that had had the “right not to tolerate” Jews before emancipation were now accessible to Jews and even offered them good economic opportunities. They were often regional centers near smaller communities inhabited by Jews before emancipation. Yet the new or renewed Jewish presence often led to conflicts with non-Jewish inhabitants, as happened, for instance, in Kaaden (Kadaň). In 1861 a Jew named Kohn from the nearby town of Girkau (Jirkov) was the first to rent a flat in this town. Before he moved in, however, an anonymous pamphlet threatened to set the town on fire if he were allowed to stay. According to a newspaper correspondent, local inhabitants armed with clubs and other tools gathered and threatened to kill the Jewish newcomer.6 Not surprisingly, Kohn changed his plans. The Kaaden population, according to the reports of the head official of the district, harbored hatred toward Jews. The murder of a Christian child by a Jew in 1650 resulted in the expulsion of the Jews from the town, which was then awarded a special privilege by Emperor Ferdinand III not to allow their settlement. The memory of this event was also kept alive in an oil painting placed prominently in the local church. Thus, in 1866, when a Jew named Simon Lustig paid for the right to collect the local food tax, the chain of unpleasant events repeated itself: a threatening letter, a physical attack against Lustig’s Christian employee, and withdrawal from the contract to collect the tax.7 Yet under the new circumstances, such resistance to Jewish settlement could not last. As early as 1870 Alois Schneider, from the nearby village of Weitentrebetitsch (Široké Třebčice), succeeded in opening a business, and other Jews soon followed. The

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Kaaden community opened a new synagogue and transformed itself from a religious association into a state-recognized religious community.8 Mährisch Ostrau (Moravská Ostrava) was another new space that within several decades changed from a village into a booming mining and manufacturing center. This city provides a fine example for an analysis of the dynamics of integration and interaction in a context that differs from most other Bohemian and Moravian cities and towns. Located at the border between Moravia and Silesia, close to Habsburg-governed Galicia, Mährisch Ostrau was a laboratory of social change and a new, proletarian, multiethnic society. Jews played a catalyzing role in this experiment. In 1869 the town’s 410 Jews constituted some 6 percent of the total population of 6,881, and by 1921 their numbers had multiplied tenfold to 4,969 out of 41,765 inhabitants, nearly 12  percent of the total. When the population of the larger Ostrau agglomeration reached 113,709 by 1921, 9,468 Jews (or 8  percent) lived there. Many Jews helped to drive what became an economic powerhouse, particularly the Rothschild and Gutmann families, who developed the Witkowitz (Vítkovice) iron and steel works and coal mines, and the Wechsberg family, who founded an early private bank. While the more than fifty traditional Jewish communities in Moravia (such as Nikolsburg/Mikulov, Prossnitz/Prostějov, and Boskowitz/Boskovice) were increasingly caught in decline, Ostrau became a new center of Jewish life in Moravia.9 Jews in different occupations and situations contributed to the transformation of such spaces. Starting in the 1920s Rudolf Wels designed buildings in the spa town of Carlsbad (Karlsbad/Karlovy Vary), an extraordinary modern Jewish space in its own right.10 He was, however, interested in more than just the comfortable middle-class spa life: He designed a number of buildings for the mining town of Falkenau (Falknov, from which Jews had been barred until 1848), including the Bergarbeiterheim (Miners’ Home, opened in 1925), which was designed for arts and social events of the working-class residents. Its façade was decorated with a large bas-relief showing “a day in the life of a miner,” and the interior was decorated with, among other works, the busts of T. G. Masaryk and Karl Marx. In addition to many other buildings, Wels designed “miners’ colonies,” affordable, healthy, working-class neighborhoods inspired by the garden-city movement.11 While Prague continued to be the most populous and influential Jewish community in Bohemia, the meaning of Jewish Prague changed dramatically. Concentrated at the start of emancipation in the former Jewish ghetto—now turned into the fifth district of Prague, Josefstadt (Josefov)—Jews participated in shaping the rapidly evolving cityscape. Especially after 1859, with the introduction of legislation for freedom of movement, Prague Jews sought escape from the physical as well as the figurative ghetto. Josefstadt, numbering 5,929 Jews (95 percent of the population) in 1843, 4,798 (45 percent) in 1880, and

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2,198 (24  percent) in 1900, with its narrow overcrowded streets and old housing, became a ghetto in the sense of a slum, shared with the Prague poor regardless of religion. Affluent Jews, as we shall soon see, moved to the new bourgeois neighborhoods. Yet in popular representations Josefstadt, with its picturesque narrow streets and historical sights, continued to be generally perceived as a “Jewish” space. The Old Jewish Cemetery, the Altneuschul (Old-New Synagogue), as well as the rows of shops and workshops attracted the attention of journalists and artists. While for some it became a symbol of a romantic past to be observed, ethnographically categorized, and musealized, others made it a center of crime, particularly Jewish crime, and saw Josefstadt through the lens of antisemitic theories large and small. As a highly visible vestige of Jewish history and presence, it figured prominently in early antisemitic conspiracy theories: The conservative Prussian writer Hermann Goedsche (1815–78), publishing under name Sir John Retcliffe, in 1868 made the cemetery a venue for a mysterious secret meeting of the leaders of the dispersed Jewish tribes conspiring to bring about Jewish domination of the world.12 Eduard Rüffer (1835–78), a Czech conservative writer, journalist, and proponent of the military readiness of the Czech nation, imagined the deleterious actions of the worldwide Jewish conspiracy orga nized from a house in the former ghetto.13 The depictions were part of the discussion about the position of Jews in modern society: Romanticizing narratives considered the Jews, at least as a community, to be a thing of the past and to disappear in the process of assimilation. But according to Goedsche and Rüffer, the Jews were at home in the ghetto, and their geographic and social mobility represented dangerous transgressions of the established social order. In 1896 demolition work began, eventually reducing this historic neighborhood to piles of rubble, to make way for building on a new, ambitious street plan. Only six synagogues out of the existing nine, the Jewish town hall, and the Old Jewish Cemetery survived the ghetto clearance. Memories of it were inscribed in mental maps of local Jews, as expressed, for example, by Franz Kafka in a private conversation: “We walk the streets of the newly built town. But our footsteps and our glances are uncertain. Within we are trembling just as in the old little streets of adversity. Our heart knows nothing yet of the clearance being carried out. The unhealthy old Jewish Town in us is far more real than the hygienic new town around us.”14 Termed Asanierung (asanace, slum clearance), this was one of the most ambitious European urban reconstruction projects of the time. Based on a plan developed by Alfred Hurtig and approved by the Prague municipality in 1887, it aimed to impose modern architectural, sanitation, and economic principles on the fabric of a historic city. The new buildings, in fashionable Revival styles, taller and more comfortable, corresponded to

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contemporary middle-class living standards. For the Czech national movement, the project was important also because of the proximity of the former ghetto to the Old Town Square and the historic town hall of the Old Town, the most powerful Czech-controlled political body before 1918.15 The planning and implementation were informed and facilitated by the general ignorance of Jewish cultural heritage, which was negatively associated with the ghetto. Hurtig’s plan was, after all, called “Finis ghetto” (The end of the ghetto). Many Christian sites were also earmarked for demolition, and for some, like the Convent of St. Agnes and the Clam-Gallas House, the public waged a successful preservationist campaign. Yet slum clearance destroyed, without public discussion, three Baroque synagogues (the Großenhof-Synagoge/ Velkodvorská, Zigeunersynagoge/Cikánova, and Neuschul/Nová), numerous prayer rooms, and other historical buildings. The only contentious site seemed to be the Old Jewish Cemetery, which would considerably shrink in size, with three broad streets cutting through it. Following protests by the Prague Chevra Kadisha (burial society) and the Jewish community, the site was inspected by a city committee. Based on the assessment of the Czech conservative historian Václav Vladivoj Tomek that the cemetery was not as old as generally thought, the experts agreed that it was of low historic value. A new plan was approved which saved a larger part of the site but still markedly cut into its territory—regardless of the numerous protests by Jewish members of the city council, the Chevra Kadisha, and others. The disappearance of the Jewish cultural heritage in Prague catalyzed the creation of a Jewish museum association whose members, as they saw it, struggled against the clock to collect the remnants of a vanishing Jewish culture and way of life. The museum, discussed in detail in the next chapter, was also forward-looking in carving out a new type of cultural space to represent Jews. The rebuilding of the “ghetto” into a modern neighborhood highlighted the significance of new middle-class urban spaces that offered economic opportunities and a better standard of living in Prague and beyond. In Prague, Jews moved in large numbers into new neighborhoods growing around the city center. The growth of the suburb of Königliche Weinberge (Královské Vinohrady) illustrates this process and shows how new urban spaces offered a better, less contested, way of Jewish integration. Built after the demolition of the old city walls starting in the 1860s, it became a center of Jewish social, commercial, and religious life. By 1900 the Jewish community (organized separately from Prague) had 3,500 members and was—until its integration into the Prague community in 1920—the second largest in Bohemia.16 The impressive new synagogue (described later in this chapter) became a symbol of Jewish success and integration. Not surprisingly, it also made Czech antisemites lament: The Roman

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Figure 13. Demolition of houses between the former Rabbinergasse /Rabínská ulice (today Maiselova ulice) and the earlier Hahnpassgasse/Hampejská ulice (today U Starého hřbitova), Prague, 1910. © Prague City Archives.

Catholic press saw the synagogue, visible from afar, as being in competition with Prague churches, and Czech nationalist antisemites attacked the bilingual character of the community and, among other things, the participation of city officials in the bilingual dedication ser vice.17

The Changing Function of the Jewish Community The function of the Jewish communities reflected their changing legal standing, social role, and location in space. From autonomous bodies exerting wideranging authority over Jewish neighborhoods, the communities were transformed into religious bodies in charge of only synagogues, cemeteries, Jewish relief work, and religious education. As part of a figurative new “social contract” with the Jewish community, this new role corresponded to the position of religion in the liberal worldview: Though an essential precondition of the moral conduct of citizens, religion was considered a private matter, separate from

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politics and the state administration. This made Jewish integration into the nation (however it was understood) possible and desirable. The new compatibility with cultural, social, and national integration is also visible in the official terms used to describe Jews as Israeliten (israelité) or people of the mosaische Religion (mojžíšského vyznání). Yet such a distinction was easier said than made—in the public sphere, Jews were often discussed in collective terms, based on an implicit Jewish collective identity or ethnicity. This coherence predicament notwithstanding, many older communities in Moravia continued to function also as “political” self-administrative units with independent municipal councils, mayors, police, schools, and elections. Thus in many smaller towns, two territorial self-administrative communities existed side by side: a larger “Christian” one and a smaller “Jewish” one. Beginning in the 1860s, these autonomous Jewish communities—an anachronism at the time— helped to support the Austrian-German position during the elections in the urban curia. (In Cisleithania voters were divided into bodies defined by occupation, status, and taxes, which elected different numbers of representatives.)18 In the second half of the century, in striking similarity to Josefstadt, these Jewish municipalities were becoming less Jewish, as some Jews migrated to the “Christian” parts of town. After the failed revolutions of 1848–49, many Jewish businessmen who played an important role in the local economy moved to town centers, opened shops, and bought houses. They very often faced the distrust and protests of the non-Jewish inhabitants. The former ghettos, poorer and particularly overcrowded, were now also increasingly populated by the local poor of both religions. Jewish political communities, however, managed to retain their Jewish identity and to support separate schools and other institutions. According to the 1890 census, the twenty-seven Jewish “political” communities of Moravia still had more than 16,000 inhabitants. Yet Jews made up only 55 percent of the communities’ population, and 70 percent of all inhabitants declared German to be their language of daily use (compared to 24 percent in the parallel “Christian” towns).19 The wish of the Jewish communities to preserve their cultural identity figured prominently among the reasons for the persistence of this administrative anomaly. The Jewish preference for German as the language of education, administration, and business was not, however, an expression of a German nationalist orientation, but rather a sign of their continued adherence to the tradition of the German-Jewish Haskalah and to the form of German liberalism associated with Jewish emancipation, as well as an expression of the broader professional and business possibilities the German language offered. Jewish political communities existed until after World War I, when they were abolished by the new Czechoslovak state, which had no interest in preserving communities that culturally were largely German.20

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Throughout most of the nineteenth century, Jewish communities in the country operated under precarious legal conditions. In Bohemia, for instance, only Prague had a state-recognized Jewish community. This made it difficult to collect synagogue taxes from members who had moved or whose relationship to the community had become weaker, and the situation led to numerous conflicts. Only the law on the “external legal relationships of the religious communities” (or simply Israelitengesetz), adopted by the Reichsrat in March  1890, regulated the relationship between the Jewish communities and the state.21 The law had far-reaching consequences: It treated Jewish communities as territorial organizations and thenceforth allowed only one community per district. Other existing communities had to be dissolved and integrated. Unlike the case in Hungary or Prussia, religious differences between the Orthodox and more reform-minded groups had to be settled within one community. Every community was obliged to provide evidence that its financial resources were sufficient to maintain a synagogue, pay salaries, and provide religious education. Due to its exclusiveness, the new community structure exacerbated the erosion of smaller communities in the countryside. With statutes and elected officials subject to state approval, 206 communities were created in Bohemia, fifty in Moravia, and ten in Silesia. While the status of the individual geographically defined communities was put on a more solid footing, determining the structure of the Jewish communities until the Shoah, central organizations such as the Landesmassafond in Moravia and especially the Repräsentanz der Landesjudenschaft in Bohemia increasingly lost power and purpose. Both the Moravian and the Bohemian organizations were transformed into largely charitable foundations administering bequests that supported Jewish religious and social life. Only the Moravian Landesmassafond remained a “symbol of unity and cohesion” in times of migration and demographic decline in the countryside.22 Nevertheless, these once-prestigious bodies helped to maintain intercommunity bonds and personal networks, and made it possible to establish new central organizations or to revitalize historic ones. In 1896, for example, representatives of thirty (later sixty) communities founded the Gemeindebund der israelitischen Cultusgemeinden für Böhmen (Association of Jewish Communities in Bohemia) which, however, never turned into an effective central administrative body of all Jewish communities in Bohemia. The absence of strong central intercommunal bodies that would, for example, reduce the financial problems of smaller communities and regulate migration remained a major point of criticism of the Israelitengesetz right until World War I. These discussions paved the way for the foundation of territorial federations after 1918.23 Rural synagogues were often parts of larger buildings that also housed Jewish schools and teachers’ and rabbis’ flats. The religious function of the house

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was hardly noticeable from the outside, and the interior lacked elegant furniture and impressive decoration. The modern synagogues, most of which were erected within a short period—for example, in Lundenburg (Břeclav) in 1868, in Znaim (Znojmo) in 1887–88, in Reichenberg (Liberec) in 1887–89, and in Bodenbach (Podmokly) in 1907—looked strikingly different from their predecessors. High towers and superb domes signified the new legal and social status of the Jewish community.24 These “symbols of emancipation” were often located in the very centers of towns and were intended to highlight the uniqueness of Jewish religious tradition as something distinct from Christianity. Along with other historicizing elements borrowed from the Gothic and Renaissance revival styles, Moorish ornamentation, very popular in Central Europe around 1850, became a key element of synagogue architecture. It reflected not only the “Oriental” origin of Judaism but also the flourishing Jewish culture of medieval Spain, an important point of reference for Jewish historians during the nineteenth century.25 Moreover, the Moorish style was not used for churches and thus remained an exclusively Jewish form of the sacred architecture of Europe. This trend is nicely illustrated by the new synagogue in the Prague neighborhood of Königliche Weinberge. Designed by the distinguished Viennese Jewish architect Wilhelm Stiassny (1842–1910), it opened in September 1896, just in time for the High Holidays, when synagogue was still attended by most Jews. Its dominant form with two spires was a symbol of the power and integration of the Jewish community; the resemblance to the nearby Neo-Gothic church of St. Ludmila, whose west façade also consists of two steeples and a gabled portal, was remarkable. The synagogue’s main façade was decorated with a large rose window that featured the Star of David; above the tympanum one could see the tablets of the Ten Commandments. Serving one of the biggest Jewish communities in the Bohemian Lands, the Weinberge synagogue provided seats for no fewer than two thousand people, including three galleries for women.26 Other construction projects, less visible from the outside, were typical of the second half of the nineteenth century. Many old synagogues were adapted to the needs of the moderate Viennese rite, which became dominant in Bohemia since the 1830s. The reform lacked a clear ideological program, respecting the traditional Hebrew liturgy but introducing festive music and German (and later also Czech) sermons to make the ser vice more spectacular. The new rite gradually spread even to religiously more conservative Moravia. For example, in 1877 the synagogue of Loschitz (Loštice) was “converted” into a temple by moving the bimah where the Torah is read from the center of the synagogue toward the ark housing the Torah scrolls.27 The proximity of bimah and ark (in Loschitz, referred to as an “altar”) enabled the rabbi to deliver sermons in front

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of the whole congregation and thus resembled Christian worship. It is fair to see adaptations of this kind, like the new synagogue buildings, as a social statement, declaring Jews to be equal to their Christian neighbors in political and religious rights.28 Religious education and charity, traditional areas of community responsibility, were also changing at this time. Since the reign of Emperor Joseph II (r. 1765–90), Bohemian and Moravian Jewry had maintained a dense network of German-Jewish schools that combined a secular curriculum with religious education provided by the Jewish community. The May Laws of 1868 and the Imperial School Law of 1869, however, separated church and state, and the distinct Jewish school system was no longer needed.29 Nonetheless, the GermanJewish school system persisted even in areas where most of the population spoke Czech.30 This may well not have been a result of insufficient loyalty toward the Czech language and culture, but simply an expression of the confidence of many Jews in the established educational system. Starting in the 1880s, the GermanJewish school system was extensively targeted by Czech nationalists and the Czech-Jewish movement. A press campaign initiated by the influential CzechJewish National Union declared German-Jewish schools a useless vestige of the past. Moreover, the union was eager to spread news about schools that had already been closed down, as, for instance, in Kolin (Kolín), where sixty voting community members signed a letter against the existing German-Jewish school in March 1898.31 In September 1898 the Jewish community board decided unanimously to close the school and to establish a private class for religious education in Hebrew and German.32 By 1900 about three-quarters of all former German-Jewish schools in Bohemia had disappeared.33 The communities had lost influence over education, but their efforts to maintain control over Jewish charity (tzedakah) remained evident. Traditionally an important part of community life, tzedakah established a bond between the rich and the poor. With the decline of the halakhic way of life, the commitment to welfare became a principal identity marker of one’s attachment to the community. Since the mid-nineteenth century, tzedakah was orga nized on the principles of modern philanthropy: Not only Prague but also smaller communities attempted to centralize funds obtained as donations and membership fees of charity associations. This reflected the challenge over how to effectively handle the growing number of local and foreign applicants. Among the latter were vagrants excluded from any welfare support from the local authorities, because these payments were restricted by law to members whose place of domicile (Heimatgemeinde) was where the support was provided.34 Moreover, impoverished “foreigners” were threatened with forced deportation to their Heimatgemeinde and could rely only on private help or the support of

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religious institutions. Since the 1880s the thousands of East European Jews fleeing pogroms and poverty in Russia were making a bad situation worse; on their way to America via Hamburg or Bremen, they often stayed in Bohemia. Bodenbach, today part of Děčín (Tetschen), a small industrial town near the border with Saxony, whose Jewish community had emerged only after 1890, was among the places most affected by the influx of Jewish refugees and vagrants. Unable to accommodate them all, the community board repeatedly applied to the Jewish community of Prague for assistance. Eventually, the plight of Bodenbach triggered the centralization of Jewish relief measures to prevent or at least to mitigate Jewish vagrancy in Cisleithania. On the eve of World War I, the Zentralstelle für jüdische Wanderarmen-Fürsorge (Central Welfare Office for Jewish Vagrants) was founded in Vienna. On the one hand, the Zentralstelle managed funds that had been established by Austrian Jewish communities to support Jewish vagrants. On the other, it sought to restrict the number of beggars entering the country by organizing border checkpoints to process their requests. Through mutual cooperation, the Jews of Austria hoped to reduce the financial burden on small Jewish communities and to stop the growth of antisemitism. The Zentralstelle therefore adopted Central European Jews’ typically ambivalent approach toward their brothers and sisters “from the East.”

Living Jewish: Judaism in Private Spaces Even as they moved to new or newly accessible neighborhoods and shared public space (as well as educational institutions and occupations) with Christians, Jews in private still preferred to live together. Using a statistical analysis of several Prague parishes, Gary B. Cohen has demonstrated that, in about 1900, Jews disproportionally tended to occupy the same houses. Family and business networks often influenced their choice of flats and neighbors.35 Yet this guarded Jewish private space was shifting too. Changes in the Jewish family accompanied the Jews’ coming to terms with social and cultural modernization. The legal emancipation of 1867 made way for a new self-understanding of Bohemian and Moravian Jewry, based on the recent achievement of full civil rights and the implicit promise of further social integration. At the same time, the May Laws of 1868 facilitated religious conversion and introduced civil marriage, albeit only after a rabbi or priest had confirmed that a religious wedding was impossible; for the first time, Jews were not forced to be baptized in order to marry non-Jews. Indeed, they were now confronted with Christians who wished to join the Jewish community, mostly out of love for a Jewish partner. The downside of equality was the danger of losing Jewish tradition, or at least the fear of losing it, often articulated in the Jew-

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ish press in stories reflecting uncertainty about the new Jewish identity as well as the decline of community institutions. Moreover, increasing antisemitism transformed gender roles and the perception of the Jewish faith and its implications for family life. Faced with an often hostile environment, women in par ticu lar were supposed “to both foster acculturation and to set limits to assimilation,”36 that is, to strengthen Jewish self-confidence among their children while insisting on the bourgeois values of the Christian majority. This ambivalence is well illustrated by Fanny Neuda’s popu lar JugendErzählungen aus dem jüdischen Familienleben (Tales of Jewish family life for youngsters), first published in Vienna in 1876.37 A rabbi’s widow from Loschitz in Moravia, Neuda is known best for her women’s prayer book Stunden der Andacht (Hours of devotion, 1855)—as discussed in Chapter 3, the first to be written by a woman. Each of her stories features a child, usually from a poor Jewish family, and describes Jewish holiday customs to young readers in the most glowing colors to foster a positive attitude toward Judaism. The combination of entertainment and moral instruction was nothing new, but her writings suggest that Neuda was not satisfied with religious education either at home or at school. Women, commonly regarded as gatekeepers of Jewish tradition, were not to blame for this religious decline, however. Indeed, Neuda introduces strong modern female characters who act without male support: “Madame” Wallstein, for example, whose family fell into poverty because of her husband’s business failures, secretly writes to her wealthy uncle and thus achieves the means to save her children.38 Neuda’s plots are set in entirely Jewish neighborhoods that include positive and negative Jewish characters. The only outsiders to this Jewish microcosm are the “Gypsies” who play an important role in a story that explains the customs of Hanukkah.39 Socially more marginalized than the Jews, the Roma in Neuda’s book serve as outsiders, performing a role non-Jews traditionally associated with Jews. Neuda’s depiction of them oscillates between stereotypes and the Roma conjured in the main character’s imagination. In the story, the Roma try to kidnap little Irma on her way home from school. They eat their meal in the presence of pigs—something that horrifies Irma from a halakhic and broader, bourgeois cultural point of view. But Irma also remembers honorable “Gypsies” who live in their own houses and work in their fields “like other farmers.”40 On the one hand, Neuda’s Jewish “world of its own” expresses self-confidence: The non-Jews constitute a minority—strangers one can easily handle; and the Jews follow their own way of life without needing to differentiate themselves strongly from non-Jews. On the other hand, Neuda’s microcosm can be viewed in a less sanguine light, as a response to the fear of losing one’s religious ties. A glimpse into the Jewish household reveals a similar dynamic: Jewish identity became a matter of everyday culture at the same time that religious

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observance apparently ceased to be a matter of consistent practice. This contrasted with a strong emotional attachment to tradition, which resulted in an increasing aestheticization of religious customs: Everyday objects that explained and facilitated religious traditions for people who had only a rudimentary knowledge of them soon became very popular. For example, illustrated memorial albums were used to record yahrzeits (anniversaries of the deaths of relatives) according to the Jewish calendar.41 Moreover, these booklets describe popular mourning observances and offer Latin transcriptions of the Kaddish, a prayer that plays a central role during Jewish mourning after the death of a close relative. The fact that a lot of mourners obviously did not know a single word of Hebrew or Aramaic and needed help to fulfill their mitzvah (commandment) testifies both to the decline of religious education and the fear of losing this heritage. The trend—“commercializing” Jewish traditions—was intensified by middle-class gender patterns that separated male and female spheres along the lines of public work and private home. Contemporary Jewish cookbooks, typically written by women for brides and housewives who were supposed to manage a Jewish home, are an excellent source for exploring such gender patterns and cultural and religious loyalties. Probably the most popu lar Jewish cookbook in the Bohemian Lands was Marie Kauders’s Erstes israelitisches Kochbuch für böhmische Küche (The first Jewish cookbook of Bohemian cuisine), which was first published in Prague in 1886 and went into many editions.42 Like authors of other Jewish cookbooks, Kauders combined traditional Jewish dishes with local cooking.43 Recipes for “schalet” (cholent) and “kugel” as well as for dumplings and cinnamon “kolache” (tarts filled with fruit or cream) helped to maintain a regional Jewish way of life, which could be also adopted by nonobservant readers and function as a reservoir of nostalgic sentiments even for those who had officially left the Jewish community.44 At the same time, Kauders explained kosher rules (kashrut) and special preparation ceremonies required for Passover. When she instructs her readers how to prepare venison, which belonged to the bourgeois menu rather than to the traditional Jewish diet, she carefully reminds the cooks that the animal must not have been hunted; in order to be kosher, it must be slaughtered.45 Integrating the dining culture of the non-Jewish middle class, Kauders’s cookbook offered a modern concept of Jewish identity. That the author defended the dietary laws by pointing both to the calming effect of religion and to hygiene46 indirectly reflects her readers’ vague notions of Judaism. This vagueness may also have been a result of the slightly increasing number of marriages between Jews and non-Jews, although before World War I the vast majority of Bohemian and Moravian Jews still preferred to marry Jewish partners.47 In this respect the Jews of the Bohemian Lands were much more

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conservative than their coreligionists in nearby Austria, Germany, or Hungary, where career opportunities may have been more dependent on social integration in the Christian majority. Nevertheless, the mere possibility for Jews and non-Jews to marry on an equal basis had a great impact: Neither the groom nor the bride had to convert to be married in a civil ceremony; instead, one of them had to declare himself or herself unaffiliated with any religion (konfessionslos). As far as we can see from the records of the Jewish community of Prague between 1871 and 1917, men and women were almost as willing to leave the Christian faith to marry a Jewish partner as the reverse; moreover, the occupational distribution of the grooms indicates that marriages between Jews and non-Jews occurred especially among members of the middle and lower-middle classes.48 The problems faced by the bride and groom when trying to cope with the highly emotional situation of maintaining one’s personal identity despite leaving one’s religion, and the discussions about the consequences for Jewish religious and cultural identity, are reflected in Leopold Kompert’s novel Zwischen Ruinen (Among ruins, 1875).49 It tells the story of a Jewish widower, Jonathan, and a Catholic nanny, Dorothea, who helps raise Jonathan’s only child. Overcoming their inner struggles, the couple gets married, symbolizing Kompert’s ideal of compromise and tolerance. It is no coincidence that the names of the two main characters have the same meaning: “gift of God” in Hebrew and Greek. Conversion to Judaism also affected Jewish society after 1868, at least marginally. The chief rabbinate of Prague processed applications for those who wanted to become Jewish, and thus became the authority on conversion. This is evident from the letters of intent and official certificates of rabbis who supervised the conversion process; they were sent to the Bohemian capital by men and women from major cities and the countryside as well.50 Most applied for conversion in order to marry a Jewish partner. But there were also exceptions: In 1872, for instance, Marie Blaschke of Brno declared that “Judaism was the best religion”;51 in June 1904 a Roman Catholic family of three became members of the Jewish community of Mährisch Ostrau.52

Popular Culture During the second half of the nineteenth century, the Jewish popu lar press steadily grew, and the range of communications media diversified in type and language. Calendars and almanacs that had normally served the needs of an acculturated, mostly bourgeois readership became increasingly popu lar. By adopting Jewish folklore and history as well as providing insight into contemporary Jewish decorative arts and literature, they reflected trends toward

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popu lar formats within the non-Jewish press since the Enlightenment. The German-language Illustrirter jüdischer Volkskalender (Illustrated Jewish popular almanac), edited by Wolf Pascheles and later by his son in Prague from 1852 onward,53 and the Czech-language Kalendář českožidovský (Czech-Jewish almanac) were among the most popular. The latter was launched in 1881 by the Czech-Jewish Students Association (Spolek českých akademiků-židů) to stimulate Jewish reading and writing in Czech.54 Lesser-known journals mainly served the Jewish youth and, as a rule, promoted the Zionist movement. A typical example of such instructional literature, which aimed at strengthening personal bonds with Judaism on an ethnocultural basis, is Jung Juda: Zeitschrift für unsere Jugend (Young Juda: A journal for our youth). Founded by Filipp Lebenhart (1858–1933), a Prague proponent of cultural Zionism, it was published from 1900 to 1935. Energetically promoted by Hugo Bergmann (1883–1975) and other members of Bar Kochba,55 it offered introductory Hebrew lessons and presented heroic figures from Jewish history, but also combined modern fairy tales with practical information about traditional religious customs. Indeed, the first volume (1900–1901) was called Jüdisches Gefühl (Jewish sentiment), whereas the subsequent issues of the journal were renamed after its main audience: Jung Juda, that is, Jewish youth, which was praised as the “flower of Zion” and a symbol of “hope and trust.”56 The journal stands out for its longevity: It was able not only to survive the end of the old political order in 1918,57 but also to maintain a substantial number of subscribers, with 1,500 by the mid-1920s.58 These readers lived in Bohemia and Moravia, but also in other parts of the Habsburg monarchy and its successor states, especially in Galicia, and in Vienna.59 Jung Juda is also interesting linguistically. Already by its second year, several readers expressed their disappointment that the editors had not published a Czech version.60 It was published only in German because of a lack of funds. Still, the journal aimed to educate readers regardless of the “language they may use,” and the editors were prepared to publish selected articles in Czech, if at least four hundred subscribers opted for a Czech version.61 Not surprisingly, the unprecedented social, economic, and cultural changes of the period became central topics depicted in Jewish fiction. Leopold Kompert, born in 1822 in the small central Bohemian town of Münchengrätz (Mnichovo Hradiště), was one of the European Jewish authors who in the 1840s and 1850s established the Ghettogeschichte genre, known for its detailed descriptions of everyday life on the eve of emancipation.62 Jewish authors in Moravia and Bohemia writing in German, like Max Grünfeld (1856–1933), or in Czech, like Vojtěch Rakous (born Adalbert Östreicher/Österreicher), 1862–1935) and Max Lederer (1875–1937), revived this genre at the end of the nineteenth century.

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Rakous was born into a rural Jewish family near the small central Bohemian town of Brandeis an der Elbe (Brandýs nad Labem), and owned a shoe store in the industrial suburb of Prague Lieben (Libeň). As an amateur writer, before he turned professional, he expanded the Ghettogeschichte genre by writing stories commissioned by the Czech-Jewish movement.63 Published in Czech-Jewish periodicals, his vivid, humorous stories about everyday Jewish life in the Bohemian countryside included his tales of Modche and Rézi (Resi),64 in which he idealized relations between Jews and non-Jews at a time of rising antisemitism. Yet he did not completely ignore conflicts within Jewish society and between Jews and non-Jews in a changing rural world. Indeed, he became a chronicler of the rural Jewish culture that was rapidly vanishing as a result of migration. In one of his later stories, Rakous traced the Jewish cemetery as a repository of the remnants of Jewish life in the historical past and as a place of return. At a funeral, a gravedigger in the village of Leschan (Lešany) who refused to move to his children’s home in the city and thus lost touch with them, identifies the deceased as his son. The sonʼs Catholic wife had fulfilled his last wish to be buried in the cemetery of his native village. The gravedigger finally agrees to recite the Kaddish for his lost son. The story is about the loss of tradition and culture, which many Jews felt in times of rapid urbanization and change. These sentiments were expressed in Czech-Jewish and Zionist writings of the period.65 The feelings of loss and cultural crisis were accompanied by a longing for an idealized past. Nostalgia seems to have helped people to cope with the tremendous changes in the present.66 These emotions found expression in works by Rakous and, later, Max Lederer, in their short stories about transient East European Jewish refugees living in the Bohemian Lands during World War I.67 In contrast to the reflections of Czech-Jewish journalists and others in which the refugees were often derogatorily referred to as “Polish Jews” or Ostjuden,68 these stories fostered empathy, despite the persistence of cultural stereotypes. In particular, the topoi of religious practices and family ties among present-day East European Jews and in the memories of formerly rural Bohemian and Moravian Jews sought to depict a kinship among the different Jewish cultures. This corresponded to the reformulation of Czech-Jewish ideology on the eve of World War I. Viktor Teytz, a leading representative of the Czech-Jewish movement, pointed out in 1913: “In [our] lives and culture, we are Czech; in memory, Jews. We have completely merged with the Czech present; the Jewish past gives us value.”69 Recent scholars have established a synchronicity between the vanishing of the Ghettogeschichte and the rise of Ostjuden images in German-Jewish fiction and journalism just before, during, and after World War I.70 In the works

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Figure 14. Alfréd Justitz, Modche and Rézi, watercolor, undated. © Jewish Museum in Prague.

of Lederer and Rakous, however, the two genres did not replace each other but instead merged. As the lifestyle of rural Jews in Bohemia and Moravia declined, it seemed necessary to recall Jewish tradition in the countryside by depicting the lives of the Polish Jews who had temporarily revived the depopulated Bohemian and Moravian Jewish communities. The writer Jiří Langer (1894–1943), who was born into a Czech-speaking Jewish family in what was then the Prague suburb of Weinberge, took a different path in his search for authentic Judaism. In 1913 he traveled to Galicia and lived for several months with the Hasidic community in the small town of Belz. Fascinated by their religious life, Langer caused a stir in the streets of Prague after his return, just before the outbreak of World War I. As his brother František recalled, Jiří “had not come back from Belz, to home and civilization; he had brought Belz with him.”71 Unlike similar travelogues by early cultural Zionists like Hugo Bergmann,72 Langer’s work did not depict the “otherness” of East European Jewish culture with an amalgam of fascination and rejection, but instead adopted it as his own way of life. He thus stood out among the authors who helped to establish a positive narrative of East European Jewish culture in

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Czech literature at the beginning of the twentieth century. Langer, however, did not reach a larger audience until 1937, when his prewar experiences in Belz were published in full in Czech as Devět bran: Chasidů tajemství (Nine gates: Mysteries of the Hasids).73

Civil Rights or National Citizenship? Národní listy (National gazette), the leading Czech political newspaper that showcased Czech liberalism, was launched on New Year’s Day 1861, with a liberal manifesto that demanded full civic equality for the Jews. At the same time, its editorial called on Jews to abandon their “exclusive position” in society and accept the customs as well as moral standards of the Czechs.74 The progressive program, formulated by the liberal nationalist politician František Ladislav Rieger (1818–1903), made clear that Czech nationalists saw the difference between the formal equality of Jews on the one hand and their acceptance into the social structures of the nation on the other. While the former went mostly undisputed, the latter was the subject of heated controversies about the terms and conditions or even possibility of Jewish entry into the Czech nation. This created an uneasy environment for the cultural transformation of Jews after formal emancipation, a time during which most Jews developed German linguistic and political loyalties. Such debates unfolded against the backdrop of the growing antagonism between Czech and German nationalist activists in the Bohemian Lands. Competing for positions in self-government and for political power, for territory, schools, and even families, the nationalists of both sides engaged in an increasingly vicious and violent conflict, which in some situations paralyzed political life and governance in the western part of the monarchy. The radicalized image of the enemy became a standard element of the linguistic arsenal of journalists, activists, and politicians alike.75 In this struggle Jews became targets of Czech and German nationalist critiques as well as of their hopeful projections, but were rarely seen neutrally. In the nationality conflict, language was an unreliable measure of real change in patterns of integration into “national” society. The statistics show a slow shift, especially in Bohemia, from German to Czech among the people who declared affiliation with the Jewish religion. By the census of 1900, more than half of the Jews of Prague for the first time declared Czech as their “language of daily use” and so too did a slight majority of Bohemian Jews in the 1910 census. A similar, if somewhat slower, shift was also apparent in the distribution of secondary-school and university students.76 Yet in Moravia and Austrian Silesia, German widely remained the preferred language of the Jewish communities.

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Nevertheless, census data can hide more than they reveal. The requirement to select only one language made bilingualism statistically invisible. Moreover, the nationalist campaigns before each census transformed language into a question of public loyalty rather than that of private identity. Complex, situational loyalties or national indifference77 had no place in a world constructed by nationalist activists on both the Czech and German sides. In the public discussion of Jewish integration into the Czech nation, the very meaning of emancipation was at stake. Whereas for Jews this meant liberation from the “ghetto,” the repeal of exclusionary laws, decrees, and practices, and the granting of full civic equality, for Czech nationalists it was understood as the národní obrození (national revival or national awakening), as the journey of the “nation” to cultural re-creation, economic development, and political restoration. This differing view also had an impact on the narratives of Jewish history, as illustrated by the diverging perspectives brought forward in the early 1860s, when Czech liberals toyed with the idea of engaging Jews to support the national cause. In his Die Juden in Böhmen und ihre Stellung in der Gegenwart (The Jews of Bohemia and their standing at present, 1863), Markus Teller, a physician and journalist, focused on the past and current exclusion of the Jews and their struggle for equality, and highlighted Jewish success stories in business, scholarship, and the arts. For Teller, emancipation had arrived with German liberalism and, accordingly, he remained skeptical of Czech nationalist incentives offered to the Jews.78 By contrast, an anonymous Czech booklet, Die Juden und die Nationalen (The Jews and the nationalists, 1863), and Antonín Tokstein’s Židé v Čechách (The Jews of Bohemia, 1867) depicted Czechs and Slavs as generally peaceful and tolerant. Antisemitism and anti-Jewish violence had allegedly been brought into the country only with the immigration of the Germans. Yet according to the typical Czech narratives, Jews unnaturally separated themselves from the host nation by adopting German and using unfair business practices.79 The narratives of Czech tolerance and Jewish estrangement reflect the contradictions encoded in the liberal discourses about the Jews. While expecting Jews individually to integrate into the nation and to restrict their Judaism to their private lives, liberals never ceased to discuss the Jews and others in collective terms. Czech liberal language about the Jews, driven by the idea that national assimilation was a necessity, therefore oscillated between idealization and demonization. Toward the end of the 1860s, as the chances for a quick implementation of Czech national dreams evaporated, these campaigns became more radical and increasingly drew on the tradition of anti-Jewish language. Unfortunately, the liberal constitution of 1867, which furnished Jews with formal equality, was paired with the Ausgleich (Compromise),80 the reorganization of the monarchy that created a confederation between Hungary (Transleithania,

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the eastern part of the Dual Monarchy) and Austria (Cisleithania, the western part). The vision of Czech “state rights” had no place in Austria-Hungary, as the state came commonly to be known. From the point of view of the Czechs, therefore, equality for the Jews had not only been granted by the wrong side, but was also inextricably linked to a major Czech defeat. Two years later, Národní listy published a staunchly anti-Jewish pamphlet, Pro strach židovský (For fear of the Jews), penned by the well-known Czech writer of verse, short-stories, and essays Jan Neruda (1834–91), who in an explicit turn away from liberal nationalist narratives, declared the Jews unable to assimilate, singled them out for their allegedly negative role in the economy, and called upon the Czechs to achieve “emancipation from the Jews.”81 Neruda’s harsh attack became a major work of Czech antisemitism. Yet, in 1869, this manifestation of early antisemitism—similar in content to Richard Wagner’s Judentum in der Musik (1850)—remained isolated (also like Wagner’s Judentum). Bohemian and Moravian antisemitism from the 1880s onward developed along similar lines as it did among its other Central European counterparts.82 Among the Czechs, antisemites like Jaromír Hušek (1852–1932 or 1934), the publisher of the antisemitic magazine České zájmy (Czech interests), and the radical Young Czech Jan Klecanda (1855–1920) criticized the liberal nationalist worldview and attacked Jews as epitomizing a speculative market economy and stock exchange. Among German-speakers in the Bohemian Lands, the antisemitism mobilized by Georg von Schönerer (1842–1921) of Vienna made major inroads, particularly in the border areas (in contrast with the more liberal German politics in Prague). Catholic groups, including the Czech Christian Social Party (founded in 1893), continued a tradition of attributing the alleged decline of society, its materialism, and the lack of a religious basis to a Jewish conspiracy. Looking for alternatives to liberal nationalism, some radical nationalists called for a third phase in the national “awakening,” which would expand the cultural and political emancipation of the Czechs. The economist Cyril Horáček (1862–1943) attributed the weakness of the Czechs and the economic predominance of the Germans and the Jews to the introduction of liberal economic principles. “Jewish capitalism,” he argued, had enslaved Czech artisans and suppressed Czech trade. Horáček—later a respected professor of economics—argued for the adoption of antisemitism as a necessary precondition for the rebirth of the nation.83 Unlike the liberal nationalist critics of the Jews, these antisemites utterly rejected the possibility of Jewish cultural and social integration into the Czech nation. Instead of the usual condemnations of the alleged Jewish role in maintaining German predominance, they saw Jews as enemies of all nations, standing outside of and negating the national order, undermining the unity and integrity of any nation.84 The problem was not the lack of Jewish loyalty to the Czechs,

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but rather their attempts to integrate: “We cannot become enthusiastic about these Jewish declarations of Czech patriotism,” commented Klecanda on a Czech-Jewish meeting.85 Similarly, German antisemitic radicals rejected Jewish support for German nationalist organizations and founded their own organizations, for instance the Deutsches Schulverein (German School Association) which refused Jewish members. From the 1880s many German sports clubs—an essential element of middle-class culture—also adopted an “Aryan clause” (Arierparagraph) in their statutes, thereby excluding Jews from membership. The late 1880s to the early 1890s constitute a distinctive period: Antisemites from different national camps in the monarchy and beyond developed plans for transnational cooperation—after all, they believed they were facing an international enemy and were thus expressing their desire to overcome nationality conflicts. In 1891, for instance, radical Young Czech antisemites organized a demonstrative tour of Viennese Christian Social activists led by Ernst Schneider of the Prague Jubilee Exhibition (which was supposed to showcase the progress of the Bohemian economy but developed instead into a demonstration of Czech nationalism). The 1897 elections to the Reichsrat (the Cisleithanian parliament) marked a turning point, when antisemitism moved from the political periphery to the center of Czech politics. For the first time, some Reichsrat deputies were elected in the “Fifth Curia” on the basis of universal male suffrage, thus giving the Social Democrats a tangible chance to obtain seats. In the middle of the election campaign, a front-page article in Národní listy pointed to the enemies of the nation who had apparently multiplied and were threatening Czech national unity. Only the Young Czech Party, claimed the article, upheld and defended the “holy grail of the national idea and national unity.” Faced with political fragmentation and challenged in the Fifth Curia by the Social Democrats, the Young Czechs resorted to antisemitic propaganda. The article attacked the Jews’ alleged support for both Czech and German Social Democrats.86 The most closely observed race was in Prague, where the Young Czech Party nominated Václav Březnovský, a popular local politician, who was a glover by trade and a rabid antisemite by conviction. His victory created antisemitic momentum, resulting in the formation of new antisemitic political parties: the National Social Party (Česká strana národně sociální), with its anti-internationalist ideology, and the State Rights Party (Státoprávní pokroková strana or Česká strana státoprávně pokroková), founded by radical nationalists who split from the progressive movement. A new organization, Národní obrana (National Defense), harbored ambitions to coordinate the national economic awakening and the boycott against the Jews and the Germans.

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At the same time as the outspoken antisemite Karl Lueger (1844–1910) was elected mayor of Vienna (serving from 1897 until his death), antisemitism became a central element also of Czech political and social discourse, and increasingly provoked nationalist violence. When the Cisleithanian prime minister Kasimir Badeni (1846–1909), who had forged a language deal with Czech nationalist politicians (placing Czech on equal footing with German in official business in the Bohemian Lands), was forced to resign at the end of November 1897, Czech protests quickly moved from anti-German demonstrations to attacking synagogues and other symbols of the Jewish presence and plundering Jewish businesses. A similar pattern repeated itself two years later after new language ordinances were issued. In several Moravian towns, the anti-Jewish riots reached considerable dimensions—this time under the impact of the antisemitically driven blood libel trial of Leopold Hilsner.87 In late March 1899, the body of Anežka Hrůzová was found close to the east Bohemian town of Polna (Polná). This nineteen-year-old Christian woman had been brutally murdered on the way to her village. The perpetrator, probably sexually motivated, was never brought to justice, but the local community found a scapegoat in Leopold Hilsner (1876–1928), a Jewish vagrant who was alleged to be one of the murderers. Amid antisemitic press coverage, and with the participation of antisemitic journalists and politicians, local witnesses came forward to “recall” pieces of evidence of the “Jewish” crime. Hilsner was sentenced to death in 1899 and then, after an appeal and a retrial, sentenced again in 1900. (Emperor Francis Joseph commuted the sentence to life imprisonment.) Karel Baxa, a radical nationalist and antisemitic Czech politician, served as the private attorney of Anežka’s mother and introduced antisemitic motives into the courtroom. Both of the sentences, strongly influenced by the notion of Jewish blood libel (ritual murder), and hence a Jewish conspiracy, would have been inconceivable without the translation of this prejudice into the language of political antisemitism. The bloodletting of an innocent Christian served as a metaphor for the alleged Jewish exploitation of the nation and the undermining of its unity and substance by means of the Social Democratic Party. Though a large part of the Czech press sided against Hilsner, he did have some non-Jewish defenders. His attorney, Zdenko Auředníček, fought tirelessly against the prejudice, and the physician Josef A. Bulova employed forensic medicine to demolish the argument of ritual murder.88 The most influential among Hilsner’s defenders, however, was Tomáš G. Masaryk, for whom the rise of radical nationalism and “clericalism” had led to the rejection of his earlier inclination to antisemitism. After the first trial, Masaryk traveled (in disguise) to Polna to collect evidence, and he authored an appeal—published in German

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and Czech—to review the case. His principled position earned him contemptuous articles and caricatures in the press, protests from his own students, and piles of hate mail.89

Engaging in Civil Society as a Jew Two male Jewish members of the Prague middle-class elite provide examples of the successes—and challenges—of integrating into the national liberal political and social structure. In many ways they represent opposite—yet very similar—paths of integration, on different sides of the nationality conflict. Ludwig Bendiener (1840–1913), a respected lawyer, served on behalf of the German liberals in the 1880s as their last member of the Prague City Council, before they lost their seats on this self-governing body, which was increasingly dominated by Czechs. The German Casino, a centerpiece of German liberal life in Prague, offered him a public stage: Over more than three decades, he acted as the director of the German Club (the casino’s political organization) and from 1903 as the vice president of the casino.90 His career illustrates the role Jews played in Prague German social and cultural life—indeed, Jews seemed to be so prominent that some observers, including scathing Czech nationalists, often derogatorily labeled Prague Germans as mere Jews. Bohumil Bondy (1832–1907) combined business acumen with philanthropy and Czech liberal nationalism. Born into a Prague Jewish family, he developed its metals business into a thriving factory—commonly known as the “Bondovka”—in Bubny, a former suburb of Prague. As a competent member of the Prague town council, he demonstrated his usefulness for Czech politics in the Prague chamber of commerce, to which he was elected in 1881. He was instrumental in the extension of voting rights and the Czech takeover of the chamber in 1884.91 For both these men, their public activities naturally went hand-in-glove with life-long, deep involvement in Jewish religious and social life. Bendiener was a member of the leadership of the Prague Jewish community, served as president of the Association for the Reformed Ser vice, which opened the first reformed synagogue in Prague (today the Spanish Synagogue, in Geistesgasse/Dušní ulice), and represented the Israelitische Allianz zu Wien (Israelite Alliance in Vienna) and numerous other Jewish charitable organizations. He was a Jewish representative on the Bohemian school board at a time when German-Jewish schools were in decline. The official Jewish community that Bendiener participated in used German as its official language. Bondy, by contrast, was a staunch supporter of the Czech-Jewish movement. He was an honorary member of the first Czech-Jewish organization, the Association of Czech-Jewish Academics, from its founding in 1876, and contributed generously to Jewish causes, such as

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the Or Tomid association, which pressed for the introduction of the Czech language, in addition to Hebrew, in the religious ser vice. Yet, despite their success, both men were witnesses to rising antisemitism and attempts to exclude Jews from society. Bendiener intervened on a number of occasions and represented Jews in court who had experienced antisemitism. In the 1880s Jewish members of the Casino used to walk out temporarily to protest the spread of antisemitism in the club. Bondy’s rise as a Czech representative in the chamber of commerce unfolded against the background of Czech nationalist campaigns blaming Prague Jews for maintaining its German majority. His engagement in the organization of Czech nationalist Jubilee Exhibition stood in contrast with harsh calls against German-speaking Jews in the Czech press and its increasing antisemitic frenzy. Yet both Bendiener and Bondy seem to have remained undisturbed by what they may have seen as no more than marginal and temporary aberrations from the liberal project of progress and integration. Participation is an essential marker of modern citizenship. In the nineteenth century the success (or failure) of integration can be measured by the degree of the Jews’ involvement in the rich web of local, professional, arts, and political associations. Participative integration into the empire had, as Peter Judson cogently argues,92 positive potential for the Jews; but it also made it impossible for them to avoid joining in nationalist and even antisemitic forms of social life. Jews, indeed, were no outsiders to nationalism. In an increasingly nationalized society, integration involved the complex efforts to navigate the tensions between Jewish identity, local and professional interests, national loyalties, and, increasingly, antisemitism. These complexities are evident in the history of the Czech-Jewish movement. Its first organization, the Czech-Jewish Students’ Association (Spolek českých akademiků-židů) started as a small club of Czech-speaking Jewish students of Prague University in 1876. The core of the Czech-Jewish activists originated outside Prague, in the mostly Czech-speaking towns and villages, and had attended Czech-language schools before entering Prague University. In many ways the association resembled German and Czech student organizations. Yet these Czech-Jewish students set out on the larger mission to promote Czech acculturation and national loyalty among the Jews of Bohemia. The Kalendář českožidovský (Czech-Jewish almanac), launched by the association in 1881, not only made use of this popular format for the nationalist mission, but also illustrated that the road to national integration led not only through declarations of loyalty, but also through middle-class social structures and cultural products.93 The Czech-Jewish National League (Národní jednota českožidovská), founded in 1893, and its newspaper, Českožidovské listy, bears some comparison with such

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aggressive nationalist defense organizations as the National League of North Bohemia (Národní jednota severočeská) and the school associations, which mobilized for the day-to-day struggle and attempted to shift the national frontiers constructed by nationalists from both sides.94 Moreover, the National League also called for the inclusion of Czech Jews in national politics. Many of its members were affiliated with one of the two large national liberal parties, the more conservative National Party and the more radical and democratic Young Czechs. Like other radical Czech nationalist organizations, the National League was temporarily disbanded by the Bohemian governor from March 1894 to January 1895.95 As radical forms of politics, including antisemitism, grew, this nationalist integration became more difficult. The possible consequences of the antisemitic mobilization are well illustrated by a seemingly marginal conflict related to Isaiáš S. Kraus, a long-time Czech Jew and Young Czech, and an editor of the Prague-based magazine Řeznické listy (Butcher’s gazette). At a meeting of the Old Town Young Czech Club in November 1896, Kraus argued against the administration of the food tax by the city of Prague, claiming that farming out the tax to a (Jewish) businessman would be more beneficial. Arguing against him, the city councilor Jan O. Jech criticized the notion of a “Jewish speculator” exploiting the Czechs. Sarcastically depicting Kraus’s career from rag-and-bone man to newspaper editor, Jech claimed that Kraus’s Jewishness had made him unqualified to represent Czech butchers. Kraus sued for libel. Jech, a carriage manufacturer, and his defense attorney, Karel Černohorský, belonged to a radical nationalist and antisemitic faction of the Young Czech Party. They used the trial in February and March 1897, during the Fifth Curia vote in Prague, to present the allegedly alien and dangerous character of the Jews. Jech claimed not to have attacked Kraus for his religion but only “for the reason that Jews—judging from their behavior so far—are a nationality absolutely hostile to the Czechs.” Černohorský declared: “The Czech nation will never regard Jews as its members, especially not after the last elections in the Fifth Curia, where they [. . .] went over to the anti-national camp rather than vote for a Czech national candidate.” The crowd of antisemites present, who sported white carnations (briefly a symbol of the movement), welcomed Jech’s acquittal with loud cheers.96 Confrontations with Czech nationalist radicals and the perceived betrayal of the Jews by the liberal elites made many Jews question established CzechJewish patterns of reacting to antisemitism. Originally, the movement’s interpretations of antisemitism were structured by a liberal worldview and a belief in social progress. Czech-Jewish figures such as Alois Zucker (1842–1906) and Jakub Scharf (1857–1922), who were affiliated with different Czech national parties, saw antisemitism as a temporary phenomenon. Jews could, they argued, contribute to its demise by addressing the alleged ills of Jewish society—for in-

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stance, speculative business practices—and by using Czech more in their daily transactions. With the increasing education and liberation of society from “medieval” prejudice, antisemitism was supposed to vanish. In line with his liberal worldview, Bohumil Bondy attempted to intervene against antisemitism by means of education. At the height of the Hilsner Affair, he published a series articles in which he documented papal and royal decrees against the accusation of blood libel. At this time, in collaboration with the archivist František Dvorský, he prepared an edition of documents on Jewish history in Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia between 906 and 1620. Bondy died before the planned third volume could be published.97 For many Jews, however, education was not enough to counter antisemitism. Březnovský’s candidacy and the Young Czechs’ embrace of antisemitism meant a headache for the political branch of the CzechJewish movement. The meeting of the Czech-Jewish Political Union (Politická jednota českožidovská) in February 1897, at the height of the election campaign, brought the conflicting views to the forefront. Whereas Scharf, the Jewish Young Czech member of the Bohemian Diet, downplayed Březnovský’s antisemitism, many participants protested and suggested voting for the Social Democrats instead. In the end the association allowed its members freedom of choice, but also petitioned the Young Czech party to include at least one Czech-Jewish candidate (which, unsurprisingly, the party failed to do). The shock of the Hilsner Affair led Czech-Jewish activists not only to search for new political allies but also to adopt a more assertive approach to antisemitism and to Jewish identity while turning away from the liberal belief in the inevitability of social progress. What was needed was not the Jews’ “improving” themselves but the reform of Czech nationalism. The new generation of the Czech-Jewish movement, centered on the weekly Rozvoj (Progress), even suggested the integration of the moral values of Talmudic Judaism as a possible solution—something inconceivable a generation earlier.98 “We have to acknowledge that even many of us [. . .] looked at the Jew through the eyes of the antisemite, that many of us considered the reproach of parasitism to be something appropriate, and hoped that ceaseless patriotism [vlastenčení] would somehow do away [oddišputyrují] with this unfortunate defect,” argued Viktor Vohryzek in a 1904 article pointedly titled “We are not parasites.”99 In search of new political allies, these Czech Jews increasingly looked to Tomáš G. Masaryk and his political party, the Realists. His principled stance against the accusation of blood libel in the Hilsner trial attracted them no less than his calls for the ethical reform of both groups. Yet Masaryk was an ambivalent supporter of the Czech-Jewish cause: Though opposing antisemitism since the Hilsner Affair, he continued to consider Jews to be a separate nation, and he embraced Jewish, often Zionist, calls for cultural renewal.100

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Like its Czech-Jewish counterpart, the Zionist movement in Bohemia started among a small group of students at Prague University. The Maccabäa group was founded in 1893, when German nationalists left the liberal student organ ization, which was now increasingly Jewish. In 1899, the Association of Jewish Students (Verein der jüdischen Hochschüler)—soon renamed Bar Kochba—created a more durable Zionist organization. Against the backdrop of rising antisemitism, the street violence of 1897 and 1899, and the Hilsner Affair, Zionism provided both practical support and an alternative identity. Disappointment with Czech liberals and helpless Czech-Jewish reactions led many Czech-speaking Jews and often members of the Czech-Jewish movement to search for an alternative. Among them was Ludvík Singer (1876–1931). Originally from the Czech-speaking town of Kolin, central Bohemia, he was a keen participant in Czech-Jewish activities while he studied law at the Czech University of Prague. When he opened a law firm in his hometown in 1907, he joined the Zionists and rose through the ranks to become the chairman of their district committee in Prague. His background and position provided him, in turn, with a unique opportunity to negotiate the status of the Jews in the Czechoslovak nation-state in 1918.101 It is striking how similar the reformed Czech-Jewish and Zionist reactions were. In both cases activists strove to develop—in addition to mutual assistance and defense against antisemitism—a positive image of Judaism. Hugo Bergmann, the Bar Kochba chairman since 1904, promoted “cultural regeneration” and organized the study of Jewish history as well as Hebrew and Yiddish. The popularity of Martin Buber among Bar Kochba members also reflected the search for the spiritual renewal of assimilated Jews. To extricate themselves from the nationality conflict, the Zionists opted to forge another ethnonational identity. In a number of respects, the different options all reflected the same desire for social integration, which was for many people unimaginable beyond national identification. This approach was also shared by the more practical Zionists, as expressed in the first issue of the Selbstwehr weekly, which was published in Prague from 1907 to late 1938. “The time of timidity and idle waiting, of hiding and fearfully concealing any Jewish distinctiveness is over, once and for all,” exclaimed the editorial in its first issue. In language strikingly similar to that of the Czech National Awakening, it noted: “the Jewish nation is [. . .] being awakened from lethargy and sleep.” As its name suggests, Selbstwehr called for “self-help, self-protection, self-defense.”102 Zionism was, indeed, one of the possible responses to calls for Jews to stand back from the nationality conflict between the Czechs and the Germans. In Moravia, for instance, Jews who at election time traditionally supported German liberal candidates now discussed the possibility of their remaining neu-

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tral in the conflict.103 Socialism was seen as another option for Jews striving for political participation but refusing to organize along Jewish ethnonational lines. When confronted with an antisemitic Czech candidate, many Prague Jews repeatedly supported a Social Democrat. As they had done in 1897, Prague Jews now facing Karel Baxa as a candidate in the Reichsrat elections of 1907 voted for his Social Democratic opponent.104 Yet the Social Democrats were an imperfect alternative in the struggle against antisemitism; they deferred such efforts until the day when social justice was achieved. The Austrian Social Democratic party struggled to balance its universal social demands with calls for the recognition of national rights. Austro-Marxist theorists attempted to avoid the trap of nationalism by designing a framework for individual national rights, independent of territory. Before World War I, the Poale Zion, a Jewish socialist movement, also became active in the Bohemian Lands and promoted the recognition of Jewish national rights by the Austrian Social Democrats.105

Loyalty Tested In the summer, in a mountain retreat in Semmering, south of Vienna, where the Wechsbergs spent beautiful weeks in July 1914, the calm was deceptive. Amid the news of the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, the heir presumptive to the Austrian throne, and his wife, Sophie, in Sarajevo, followed by the Austrian ultimatum to Serbia, Joseph Wechsberg (who was seven at that time) remembered walks in the woods and mushroom-picking. The idyll abruptly ended on July 28, with the news of the declaration of war; immediate mobilization was achieved by way of the Südbahn (Southern Railway) connecting Vienna to Trieste, one of the ultimate Habsburg achievements. As a reserve officer, Joseph’s father, Siegfried, decided to return immediately, and the family traveled in overcrowded trains via Vienna back to Mährisch Ostrau. Several days later, in a show of loyalty to the monarchy, Joseph’s father left the house in his splendid uniform. He was killed, together with his whole company, on the Galician front, close to Bochnia (east of Cracow), in the first weeks of the war, while following a nonsensical order issued by a far-away command to charge a Russian machinegun post—an example of blind obedience.106 From another perspective, Siegfried Wechsberg’s loyal service—and eventually his battlefield sacrifice—was a result of the successful integration of Jews into the Habsburg army. First recruited during the reign of Joseph II and facing considerable obstacles, Jewish soldiers grew in number after the December constitution of 1867 and the introduction of compulsory military ser vice in 1869. Over the course of the nineteenth century, the Habsburg army went from being an exclusionary force into a vehicle of equality and inclusion, offering

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Jews better professional opportunities than other European armies of the period. Contrary to the widespread stereotype of their shirking military ser vice and avoiding risks, Jews were in fact well represented in the infantry and other combat units, also constituting a considerable part of the medical and administrative units. Jews were strongly over-represented among the reserve officers (about 18 percent), who were—like Wechsberg’s father—selected for their higher education and then honorably discharged after only one year of ser vice (as Einjährig-Freiwillige, “one-year volunteers”) instead of three.107 For Jews military ser vice became a symbol of equality, of performing the duties of citizenship. Yet instead of providing ultimate proof of Jewish allegiance to country and kaiser, the Great War put Jewish loyalties into doubt and exposed the tension between state and nation. Whether having second thoughts (which Joseph Wechsberg claims his father had) or not, Jews mobilized smoothly, as did other inhabitants of the Bohemian Lands. Jewish communities bought a considerable number of war bonds (which were ultimately never redeemed), and the Jewish press emphasized Jewish loyalty. In fact, if there was an additional Jewish incentive for the war, it was Russia, with its history of excluding the Jews. Supported by Austrian state propaganda, the Jewish press, with only some exaggeration, portrayed tsarist Russia as the land of oppression and pogroms. Before leaving for the front, Wechsberg might, for instance, have heard or read the sermon of Rubin Färber, the rabbi of Mährisch Ostrau, delivered on the kaiser’s birthday in August 1914, in which he praised Austrian culture and tolerance in contrast to Russian evil and barbarity. The war was “a battle of good against evil, of light against darkness, a battle of morality against immorality.”108 While Siegfried Wechsberg was sent to fight in Bochnia, Galicia, other Jews took to the road in the opposite direction. After the outbreak of the war, hundreds of thousands of people fled from destroyed or occupied towns and villages or were evacuated by the army to the inner regions of the Habsburg empire. According to reliable estimates, more than a million people were on the move within the monarchy in the first year of the war. About half of the Jews of Galicia and Bukovina left their homes and went, or were directed to go, to the interior. Although some districts were reopened for the return of refugees after the reconquest of large parts of Galicia in 1915, about 100,000 remained displaced in Cisleithania at the end of the war.109 They constituted the first large group of refugees in the modern history of the Bohemian Lands. State support for refugees, citizens of Cisleithania, came at the cost of extensive control. They were directed to so-called refugee communities or placed in new camps set up to prevent an influx of refugees to Vienna and other large cities. Three refugee camps for Jews were hastily set up in the south Moravian

Figure 15. The Wechsberg family on a boat during their vacation in Switzerland, before World War I. © Family archive of Barbara Wechsberg.

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towns of Nikolsburg, Pohrlitz (Pohořelice), and Gaya (Kyjov). Within the first few months, the camps became overcrowded, and refugees complained about the squalid living conditions, infectious diseases, and high mortality, especially among children. Another large camp, in Deutschbrod (Německý Brod), built in 1915 and initially inhabited by Italian and Istrian refugees, later accommodated up to 10,000 Jewish refugees. Faced with high mortality rates and a typhus epidemic, the local Jewish cemetery was not large enough, and a special cemetery had to be set up. In 1915, at the height of the refugee crisis, more than 100,000 Jewish refugees from Galicia and Bukovina lived in Bohemia and Moravia: roughly one Jewish refugee for each member of the Bohemian and Moravian Jewish communities. Local Jews quickly organized aid by setting up kosher kitchens and providing clothing and education for the children. The demand often overstretched the resources of the communities, which were already exhausted by the absence of the mobilized men and shortages. The mismanaged Prague Jewish aid committee ran large deficits and was saved only by the assistance of the Viennese Allianz, which in turn distributed the support of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, founded in 1914.110 While material assistance to the Galician “brethren” went undisputed, their stay and the perception of their cultural difference touched a raw nerve for the local Jews. The writer and influential representative of the CzechJewish movement Eduard Lederer (1859–1944) provided a particularly negative view of the Galician Jews. Writing in July 1915, while many of them were already returning home, he did not mince his words in pointing out their purported religious, cultural, and, even, he claimed, “racial” differences. This respected Czech-Jewish author criticized their “fossilized orthodoxy” and the fanatical devoutness to the “dead letter,” which “chokes all deep moral feelings.” Moreover, Lederer appears to have seen Jewish refugees as a separate race, indifferent to Western civilization: “Modernize him, put him in the most modern clothes, force him to cut his sidelocks off, compel him to trim his beard and to get a Western hairstyle. You’ll recognize him from a long way off, not only the little stooped, scrawny degenerate Polish Jew, but also those burly figures among them. Not only with his facial expression, but also with his posture and gestures, the Polish Jew is so different that he is the proverbial butt of jokes and criticism among our Jews.”111 For others, the “Eastern Jew” was the repository of authentic Judaism. While for Czech Jews like Vojtěch Rakous or Max Lederer, the refugees were a source of nostalgia for a lost Jewish past; for Zionists they were a source of the futureoriented project of national rejuvenation. In Prague, under the leadership of Alfred Engel (1881–1944), the Zionists opened a school for 1,200 refugees, and

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Figure 16. A group of Jewish refugees on the market square in Kadaň, Bohemia, 1915. © State District Archive in Chomutov.

smaller schools were opened elsewhere in Bohemia and Moravia.112 An episode described in Selbstwehr illustrates this affirmation and the ascription of meaning to the “alien” dress and customs of the Galician Jews: “On a Prague street recently, an elegant noble-looking man encountered a Galician boy with sidelocks: ‘Come here, young fellow. If you cut off your sidelocks, I’ll give you twenty crowns,’ the man called out. ‘I’ll give you 40 crowns, sir, if you grow them,’ replied the boy [in Yiddish].” For the author, the man had attempted to corrupt the boy, whom the narrator sees as embodying “sincere, naive faith [. . .] . The boy represents the upholder of civilization [Kulturträger] while the noble-looking man is just a plutocrat [Geldträger].”113 The public perception of Jews from Galicia and Bukovina, in contrast to other refugee groups, ranged from fascination and stereotype to the antisemitic picture of the Jewish usurer and war profiteer. For many, Jewish refugees were not just different or a group eating up the already meager rations; they also represented a litmus test of the loyalties of all Jews, including those at home in Bohemian Lands. The war time experience, including military conscription, shortages, and the delegitimization

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of the state, put into question those loyalties and, more broadly, the idea of integration.114 For Czech nationalist politicians and journalists, across party lines, the beginning of the war marked a dramatic challenge to the national project. Many of them, ranging from Tomáš G. Masaryk (who would soon go into exile to campaign for an independent Czech state) to Karel Kramář (a nationalist and Russophile leader who would soon be imprisoned by the Habsburg authorities for alleged treason), believed that loyal, prowar demonstrations in the first weeks after the declaration of war were nothing more than Jewish provocations. The notion of Jewish treason was a byproduct of the nationalist anxieties and calls for national unity during the state clampdown on Czech nationalist politics. In the final two years of the war, as political activity was again allowed amid the worsening shortages, the accusation of “activism” (collaboration with an illegitimate state) hung over the Jews, though their actions differed little from those of the rest of the population. The realignment triggered by the war and later by the building of the Czechoslovak nation-state not only forced Jews to rethink their loyalties, but also destabilized their position in society. The war made the very values and loyalties it was meant to validate uncertain: Jews had to prove their loyalty afresh, in a new, more radical, violent, and national framework.

C h apter 5

Becoming Czechoslovaks: Jews in the Bohemian Lands, 1917–38 Ines Koeltzsch, Michal Frankl, and Martina Niedhammer

The Czechoslovak Republic had already been in existence for about two years when Wilma Iggers was born into a bilingual Jewish farming family named Abeles in the small west Bohemian village of Mířkov (Mirschikau) in the spring of 1921. The Abeleses had built up a “company,” an association of two Jewish families, which jointly farmed around the town of Horšovský Týn (Bischofteinitz), in southwest Bohemia. Wilma, later herself a historian of Bohemian Jews, remembered the full integration, stability, and prosperity of her family during her childhood. The Abeleses maintained close contact with their Czech and German neighbors and employees. Wilma grew up in mainly German Catholic surroundings and was enrolled in a German elementary school. She continued at a Czech public school in her hometown and later attended a Czech grammar school in the neighboring small town of Domažlice (Taus). Despite what she remembers as her family’s lukewarm attachment to Jewish religion, she encountered Judaism in other forms, for instance, through her religion teacher, a former war refugee from Galicia. According to Wilma, her family became truly aware of the growing Nazi threat only in the spring of 1938, during the Anschluss, the annexation of Austria.1 Ruth Klinger, later an Israeli diplomat, was a teenager when she witnessed the foundation of the Czechoslovak Republic. Born into a German-Jewish family in 1906, she grew up in the shadow of the changing fortunes of the family haberdashery shop in Karlín (Karolinenthal), a suburb of Prague. In May 1919, she witnessed physical attacks on her parents and the looting of their shop by a rioting crowd; her mother died a few months later. Ruth Klinger and her family spoke both German and Czech, were involved in Jewish religious life, and Ruth

Map 9. Central Europe between the two world wars.

In order to trace key demographic changes in Jewish settlement in the Bohemian Lands, the same twenty-three Jewish communities are shown on the maps throughout this book. The percentage indicates the size of each Jewish community in relation to the total number of Jews in the Bohemian Lands in the period represented. An “x” indicates that no Jewish community existed in that location at the time. For further information on these Jewish communities, see the supplementary essay by Helena Klímová and Lenka Matušíková.

Map 10. Jewish Population of the Bohemian Lands in 1930 (approx. 118,000 people of the Jewish religion).

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Figure 17. Wilma Iggers (top row, left of the teacher) at the Germanlanguage elementary school in Horšovský Týn, c. 1930. © Wilma Iggers Archive.

herself became interested in Zionism. Despite the traumatic experience of antisemitism, they felt loyalty to the democratic Czechoslovak Republic. Ruth, however, moved to Berlin in 1925 to work as an actress. She lost her Czechoslovak citizenship by marrying a stateless Russian-Jewish actor, Maxim Sakaschansky (c. 1886–1952), and it became difficult for her to make a living as a “foreigner” in her native country when she temporarily returned. Together with her husband, Ruth left for Palestine in the spring of 1933.2 These life stories illustrate two facets of Jewish experience during the First Republic, when growing up Jewish in rural surroundings was as unusual as immigration to Palestine. They also share, with other biographies of the time, the image of Czechoslovakia as a real home. In the often nostalgic memories of Jewish contemporaries, the First Republic epitomized a modern “golden age” for Jews in the Bohemian Lands and Czechoslova kia. Idealizations and gaps notwithstanding, they bear witness to the common image of Czechoslova kia as an “island of democracy,” in contrast to other, less tolerant, European countries, especially its neighbors Germany, Austria, Hungary, Poland, and Romania. Czechoslovakia, though, was neither cut off from the legacy of the Habsburg Monarchy nor was it an isolated “island” in interwar Europe. The multiethnic

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would-be nation-state was part of an increasingly interconnected world that was, at the same time, confronted with rampant nationalisms and vibrant globalization.3 Jews were actively engaged in these processes, opening up and using the new possibilities and dynamics of political, social, and cultural commitments to Czechoslovak society. The process of becoming Czechoslovaks was, however, not without contradictions, tensions, and frictions in relation either to other Jews or to non-Jews.4 “Jewish difference,” an analytical tool proposed by Lisa Silverman to describe the invisible, socially constructed categories of “Jew” and “non-Jew” in interwar Austria, also marked the lives, thinking, and deeds of many Czechoslovak Jews and non-Jews.5 To highlight these ambiguities, this chapter focuses particularly on histories from below as well as from the geographic and social margins.

Citizens of a New Nation-State The last two years of World War I paved the way for the foundation of Czechoslova kia. Although cultural ties between Czechs and Slovaks had existed before that period, specific plans to create a common state first emerged in 1916–17. Jews of various political orientations in Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia welcomed and supported the program of Tomáš G. Masaryk and his followers to found a democratic Czechoslovak nation-state, even though many of them, just like non-Jews, still felt attached to the multilingual and multicultural Habsburg Monarchy. The adoption of the concept of national self-determination in the Balfour Declaration of November 1917, recognizing a Jewish homeland in Palestine, and above all in Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points of January 1918, contributed to the creation of the Czechoslovak Republic in October  1918. During the transformation from empire to nation-state, Jews asked themselves how, if at all, their minority rights would be guaranteed. Such protection was considered urgent in view of the increasing violence against Jews in all parts of Czechoslova kia.6 In February 1918, Leopold Hilsner, wrongly accused and sentenced for having committed a ritual murder, was finally set free. Having spent almost two decades in jail, he was pardoned by the new emperor, Charles, whose role as ruler was particularly difficult because Franz Joseph’s death was widely perceived as the end of an era. Hilsner’s defenders, including Masaryk and Jewish organizations, had long demanded that his trial be revisited. Paradoxically, what promised to be a final rectification of an injustice and a step against antisemitism (though not Hilsner’s full exoneration) took place as antisemitic propaganda and anti-Jewish violence were on the rise in the last year of the war. With the release of other political prisoners, particularly the Czech nationalist politicians

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Karel Kramář and Alois Rašín, and the reopening of the imperial parliament, Czech political life increasingly turned to public debate and the institutional “building” of the new Czechoslovak nation-state. This process fed into the growing insecurity of the Jewish position in society. It was as if Jewish belonging and loyalty to the new state, as well as Jewish rights within it, had to be negotiated and publicly demonstrated from scratch.7 The power vacuum and the realignment of loyalties were well illustrated by a July 1918 memorandum sent by Jewish communities in the monarchy to the Habsburg authorities. Pointing out rising antisemitic propaganda and violence, the memorandum—signed by four hundred communities throughout the monarchy—emphasized that Jews were loyal citizens, and it demanded protection from the state. Yet it also contained troubling signs of the growing uncertainty and need to accommodate to the new, postimperial, order. Referring to the possibility of Jewish self-defense and its consequences, something normally imagined in regard to the “East,” the authors voiced their lack of confidence in the ability of the Habsburg state to ensure law and order. Strikingly, some Jewish communities in Bohemia expressed misgivings about the memorandum. The Prague community initially refused to join because of the self-defense clause. The Příbram (Pribram) community argued that reactions to antisemitism should be tailored to local conditions. The feeling of being compromised by joining a monarchy-wide Jewish action and by turning to the state for protection loomed large behind such evasive argumentation.8 Violence was widely experienced by the Jews of the Bohemian Lands starting with 1917, even though mostly in nonlethal forms. In Plzeň (Pilsen), for example, an incident related to difficulties in food provision in August  1917 transformed into large-scale rioting, also attended by women and children, with a clearly anti-Jewish underlying message. While the shortages of food, fats, and fuel were used to legitimize violent protest, demonstrations and plundering also took place against the background of nation-building. At the same time, due to censorship, the violence was also a substitute form of expressing what the future characteristics of the national community should look like. The performative exclusion of the Jews was related to their being associated in the popular mind with the government and the “failing” monarchy, as well as with wartime economic institutions and practices. According to this view, the state was, by means of the wartime controlled economy and the central economic offices, behaving like a “Jewish usurer.”9 Around the time of the declaration of Czechoslovak independence in the autumn of 1918, anti-Jewish violence again moved in several waves across the Bohemian Lands, gaining strength in the apparent power vacuum. In Holešov

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(Holleschau) a large band of soldiers, supported by the local population, took justice into their own hands. They cut off the town and instigated a pogrom, causing two deaths and leaving most Jewish businesses pillaged.10 The attacks, which continued until June 1919, were guided not solely by hunger and shortages, but also by the image of Jewish disloyalty and provocation. An attack on the Klinger family in May 1919 shows how these motifs overlapped. Regina Klinger, Ruth’s mother, was falsely accused by neighbors of disloyal behav ior toward the Czech nation during the war, which mobilized the “crowd” to plunder the Klingers’ shop.11 Much of the anti-Jewish propaganda and public discontent was also directed against Jewish refugees from Galicia and Bukovina, some of whom had remained in Czechoslova kia and, with the declaration of Czechoslovak independence, became unwanted foreigners overnight. The insecurity of the revolutionary phase, which lasted until the consolidation of the state in 1920–21, prompted the Jews of Czechoslova kia, like those of other successor states, to redefine their politics and quickly free their agendas from the Jewish central bodies in Vienna.12 Yet the new Czech (Czechoslovak) framework brought a new set of dilemmas: For instance, some Czech political parties (like Masaryk’s Realists and, in some cases, the Česká státoprávní demokracie [Czech State Right Democracy]) doubted the loyalty of their Jewish members and excluded them from decision-making. In response to such exclusionary tendencies and adhering to the concept of national self-determination and minority protection, the Jewish National Council in Prague was established on October 22, 1918. The council formulated a memorandum in the name of the Jewish nation, which was also addressed to the members of the National Committee (a new Czech state body) on October 28, the day of the foundation of Czechoslova kia. The representatives of the Jewish National Council—the Czech-speaking Zionist and lawyer Ludvík Singer, the German-Jewish Zionist and writer Max Brod, and the Poale Zion (Workers of Zion) activist Karel Fischl—demanded the recognition of Jewish nationality and the individual freedom to declare it, full civil rights, national minority rights, cultural autonomy (mainly in the sphere of Jewish education and social welfare), and the democratization and unification of the Jewish communities.13 In the following months and years, the members of the (Czechoslovak) Jewish National Council—which aimed to represent various political orientations, not only the Zionist—developed a multilayered diplomacy, working with local state authorities and international political actors. Their efforts were supported by other Jewish national councils across east-central Eu rope and American Jewish representatives who were actively involved in shaping postwar policies for the protection of minorities. Even though Jews were not explicitly mentioned

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as a national minority in either the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye between Czechoslova kia and the Allies from September  1919 or in the Czechoslovak constitution of February 1920, their recognition as such was expressed in a commentary on the constitution, which permitted the declaration of Jewish nationality irrespective of one’s language and religion. As an exception, the Czechoslovak authorities allowed a radically constructivist definition of nationality, while other nationalities—particularly Czechoslovak, German, Hungarian, and Polish—were strictly determined by one’s native tongue (and in the early 1920s one’s ethnic origin). This was a result of the efforts of the Jewish National Council. Leading Czechoslovak politicians also welcomed it as a way to statistically lower the numbers of Germans and Hungarians in the country. In this, Masaryk and his long-term support of Jewish nationalism played an impor tant role too. Jewish nationality became a politically contested category in the Czechoslovak censuses of 1921 and 1930, and was occasionally questioned by official demographic experts.14 Czechoslova kia was, however, not the only country in Europe to recognize Jewish nationality. Under different circumstances, and with various definitions, Russia (and later the Soviet Union), Ukraine, Poland, and the Baltic states all recognized Jews as a nationality during World War I and/or the 1920s. By contrast, attempts to establish Jewish nationality in post-Habsburg Austria failed, and Austrian Jews were still defined by the state as a religious community. But the overarching goal of Czechoslovak and Austrian state policies was similar— namely, integration (“assimilation” in the language of those days) instead of cultural autonomy. Nevertheless, political discourse in Austria was radicalized more quickly than in Czechoslova kia, and immediately in the aftermath of World War I, leading right-wing politicians demanded that ethnicity or race, rather than language, be the defining criterion of nationality.15 With the Czechoslovak constitution of February 1920, the Jewish National Council had achieved two of its main goals: the recognition of Jewish nationality and equal rights for Jews as Czechoslovak citizens. In the long term, the council was less successful with regard to its other two aims. First, partial cultural autonomy was never granted, in contrast to other countries, and Jewish politicians struggled to obtain state support for Jewish educational and cultural institutions. Second, while democratization of the Jewish communities was advanced, a law reorganizing Jewish communal structures was passed only in 1937, too late to have any impact. Though dissolved by the end of 1920, the Jewish National Council prepared the ground for Bohemian, Moravian, and Silesian Jewish politics in the First Republic. The council was a significant voice against anti-Jewish violence as well as for a humanitarian approach to Galician

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and Bukovinian Jewish refugees, most of whom the Czechoslovak authorities forced to leave the country.16

(Un)Contested Loyalty and Jewish Citizenship In parallel to the notion of Czechoslova kia’s exceptional position in interwar Europe, Jews are sometimes discussed by scholars as Czechoslovaks par excellence, as the only minority group still faithful to the multinational republic until its end, as they had been to the Habsburg monarchy until its demise. The admiration that broad segments of the Jewish public expressed for the first president of Czechoslova kia, Tomáš G. Masaryk, supports this assumption.17 Jews, from intellectuals to common people, actively participated in the mythmaking of “TGM” (as he soon came to be known), celebrating his achievements in articles and essays, as well as in tributes at meetings and in synagogues, especially on special days, like October 28 (Czechoslovak independence day) and March 7 (the president’s birthday).18 Philosophers like Jindřich Kohn, a representative of the Czech-Jewish integrationist movement, and Felix Weltsch, a supporter of Zionism, engaged intensively with Masaryk’s concepts of humanism and realism. Translators like Emil Saudek, Camill Hoffmann, and Oskar Donath made Masaryk’s ideas accessible to a broader German-Jewish and non-Jewish audience. It was hoped that translating these works would reduce prejudice and increase mutual understanding between Czechs and Germans, as Donath, a Czechlanguage teacher at the German and at the Jewish gymnasium in Brno (Brünn), wrote in a letter to Masaryk in 1920.19 The Czech-German youth magazine Jung Juda celebrated Masaryk after his 1934 reelection as a bulwark against antisemitism and a guardian of Jewish welfare. The first Czechoslovak president received the adoration traditionally associated with Emperor Franz Joseph I, and the readers of Jung Juda must have therefore felt quite comfortable when Masaryk was described as “a good-hearted, kind, old gentleman who does not differentiate at all between peoples, races, and religions.”20 Zionists especially welcomed him without any public criticism and felt affirmed by his 1927 visit to Palestine, where he also met the Prague-born philosopher Hugo Bergmann, the director of the National Library in Jerusalem. Masaryk’s visit also laid the foundations for his myth in Palestine and later in Israel.21 Masarykʼs reputation as a humanist philosopher-president also found expression in everyday idolizing practices, captured, for example, in quotations of his words in student friendship books.22 Ilse Weber (née Herlinger), a Germanspeaking writer living in the Moravian industrial town of Vítkovice (Witkowitz) near Moravská Ostrava (Mährisch-Ostrau), named her second son, born in

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Figure 18. Tomáš G. Masaryk (left) and Hugo Bergmann in Jerusalem, April 10, 1927. © Masaryk Institute and Archives, Czech Academy of Sciences.

1934, Thomas. Increasingly faced with the nationalist radicalization of the German surroundings throughout the 1930s, she and her family still believed in the positive influence of the Czechoslovak president on integration. After Masaryk’s death in September 1937, her eldest son, Hanuš (Hans), installed a shrine in the family’s living room.23 These and other idolizing practices were quite common. Yet the Jews of Czechoslova kia were not passive objects of minority politics, expressing only thankful admiration and simplified loyalty. In general, loyalty is best understood as a special fabric of vertical and horizontal relationships linking individuals, communities, and a state or society, based on social communication, emotion, and agency.24 Especially in the “nationalizing states” of post-1918 Europe, expressions of loyalty substituted for premodern forms of fidelity and were of great importance for defining citizenship as a legal relationship.25 Jews supported and took active part in Czechoslovak state-building and in the con-

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struction of Czechoslovak loyalties and identities. They did not stand apart from nationalist politics, nor between nationalisms, using Zionism only as an exit strategy. As Zionists, Czech-Jewish nationalists, German liberals, Social Democrats, or communists, they formulated their respective attitudes toward nationalism, state-building, and Jewish integration and positioned themselves within Czechoslovak politics; their convictions were often based on hybrid identity concepts that were reinforced in specific local contexts. Often capitalizing on prewar experiences and networks, Jewish politicians became active players in the reformulation and reorganization of municipal and, later, countrywide politics.26 The Jewish Party, founded in 1919, and Poale Zion, which had existed in the Bohemian Lands since at least 1908, represented the two main Jewish political parties in the country.27 Poale Zion revived its activity at the end of World War I, only to be weakened when its left wing joined the Communist Party in 1921. The party revived its activities again in the late 1920s, when it began to work with the Jewish Party. The strongest actor among Jewish political parties, the Jewish Party maintained an official course of “national and political neutrality” throughout the First Republic.28 Whereas activists, especially among members of the youth movement, criticized such opportunism, the Jewish Party was quite successful and attracted many more voters countrywide than the total number of members of Zionist organizations in Czechoslova kia. Especially in the Bohemian Lands, its liberal program gained support among non-Zionists, whereas in the eastern parts of the country Orthodox Jews often rejected cooperation with the Zionists. Despite the party’s success at the local level, the electoral system made it more difficult to enter the parliament. Only in 1929, and in a coalition with three Polish minority parties, did the Jewish Party manage to win two seats in the Czechoslovak parliamentary elections, which they kept until the end of the First Republic. In 1935 the party abandoned neutrality and joined the Social Democratic faction in the parliament. Although the Jewish Party was supported by many German-speaking Jews, its deputies were chosen from people who were fluent in Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, Yiddish, and Russian.29 The success of the Jewish Party had to do with the regional focus of Zionism in the Bohemian Lands. Outside Prague the Zionist centers were mainly in the German-speaking border regions, especially in Moravská Ostrava in northern Moravia, with its lively Jewish political and cultural life,30 and in the industrial and spa towns of northern and western Bohemia. The regional patterns were interlinked with political difference. The Central Zionist Association of Czechoslova kia in Moravská Ostrava supported the influential center-left faction (moderate socialists from Hitaḥdut, partly from Poale Zion and Ha-Poel haTsair) and stood behind Chaim Weizmann, the leader of the World Zionist Organization. The German-speaking lawyer Emil Margulies, the driving force

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of Zionism in northern and western Bohemia, on the other hand, was opposed to Weizmann’s moderate political program and took a more radical approach. Born into an Orthodox family in Russian Poland, Margulies studied law in Vienna and settled in Teplice-Šanov (Teplitz-Schönau) in 1903, where he helped to establish a dense network of Zionist organizations. Carlsbad (Karlovy Vary/ Karlsbad), an international spa town and Jewish cultural space par excellence, hosted Zionist congresses in 1921 and 1923.31 The majority of Zionists in the Bohemian Lands preferred to stay in the Diaspora (galut) instead of immigrating to Palestine. Many young people took part in the Zionist youth movement and gymnastics organizations to socialize with their Jewish peers, and they did not always follow a markedly Zionist ideology. The Zionist movement in the Bohemian Lands was diverse, accommodating a variety of political, cultural, and social orientations.32 Some Zionists from the Bohemian Lands also played an important role in building up and promoting a “Jewish home” in Palestine. With their multicultural background from the Bohemian Lands, intellectuals like Hugo Bergmann, Hans Kohn, and Felix and Robert Weltsch had a strong impact on political and cultural Zionism. In 1925, for example, they were among the founders of Brit Shalom, whose original idea was to foster dialogue and mutual agreement between Jews and Arabs in Palestine.33 Non-Zionist politicians—both men and, to a lesser extent, women— engaged in the whole spectrum of political parties in Czechoslovakia, including those of other minorities. Many Jews supported Czechoslovak and German social democracy, and three socialist politicians of Jewish background—Ludwig Czech from the German and Alfréd Meissner and Lev Winter from the Czechoslovak party—became cabinet ministers. Together with Evžen Stern, another Czech-Jewish Social Democrat and head of the Czechoslovak Social Ser vices, these politicians played a major role in the shaping of the Czechoslovak social and legal systems after World War I. The Communist Party, the only multinational political body in Czechoslova kia, was favored by people who perceived class struggle as more important than ethnic or national unity. Although many Zionists feared the threat of “red assimilation,” the attraction of the Communist Party was, contrary to frequent stereotypical assertions, no higher among Jews than among non-Jews. The commitment to communism among Jews in Czechoslova kia took different forms: Rudolf Kohn, born in 1885  in the central Bohemian small town of Městec Králové (Königstädtel), became the leading figure of the leftist wing of Poale Zion in Bohemia. After its merging with the Communist Party, he worked for the Internationale Arbeiterhilfe (International Workers’ Aid) in Berlin and as press attaché for the Soviet embassy in Prague. In 1939 Kohn immigrated to the Soviet Union, where he died under unknown circumstances in 1941.34 Jiří

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Weil, who was born into an observant Jewish family in a village close to Prague, became a leftist writer—closely connected with the avant-garde group Devětsil— and moved to the Soviet Union as early as in 1932. After his return five years later, Weil was expelled from the party because his novel Moskva-hranice (Moscow to the border) was critical of Stalinism. He survived the Shoah thanks to his non-Jewish wife; and because he went into hiding after having faked suicide in the last months of war.35 Finally, Fritz Beer, born in 1911 into a GermanJewish family in Brno, was an active member of the Zionist pioneer organization Tekhelet Lavan (Blue White). Later he became a Communist Party member and worked as a journalist for the renowned exile weekly Arbeiter-IllustrierteZeitung (Workers Illustrated Newspaper). He joined the Czechoslovak army in exile after his immigration to Great Britain in 1939. Horrified by the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, he parted with the party once and for all.36 Kohn, Weil, and Beer, like many others, tried to transcend nationalist politics and to find solutions to social problems. The communist and socialist utopias had appealed to them because of their promise of a socially equitable society in Europe after World War I.37 The democratic beliefs as well as the socialist utopias of many Jews and nonJews in interwar Czechoslova kia were fundamentally shattered by the Nazi rise to power in neighboring Germany in early 1933, even though the dynamics of the erosion of democracy in Czechoslova kia as one of the consequences were not obvious from the beginning. Nevertheless, the political and civil society actors in Czechoslova kia were immediately confronted with the new realities of the Nazi regime, and Austrofascism, through the arrival of refugees. Because of its long border with Germany and Austria, and as a result of many familial, social, political, and occupational connections, Czechoslovakia thus became, from 1933, an impor tant destination for refugees from these countries, of whom a large part, and eventually the overwhelming majority, were Jews. Even though often lumped together as one group, they were very diverse with regard to their Jewish and political identities, social status, and citizenship. Some were fleeing direct violence: For instance, a group of four Jews from Saxony who were briefly interned in the early concentration camp Hainewalde, were humiliated and brutally mishandled by the Sturmabteilung (SA), and then pushed across the border on April 1, 1933—just as the boycott of Jewish businesses was starting in Nazi Germany. All four had to be treated in the hospital in Varnsdorf (Warnsdorf), where one of them, twenty-eight-year-old Salomon Kopf (a Polish citizen), died of severe head injuries. Gerd Kahan fled Germany in 1936, after the Nuremberg Laws were imposed, for a very “Jewish” reason— namely, his relationship with an “Aryan” woman, for which he was seen as “defiling the race.” As a stateless person and holder of a Nansen passport (his parents

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had come to Germany from Russia), he would be an easy target of Nazi persecution. According to his testimony to local police, he was warned during a business trip to Prague and Vienna not to return to Berlin, where the Gestapo was already searching for him. Fearing internment in a concentration camp, he remained in Czechoslova kia, where he registered with the Jewish refugee committee and received material support from his family in Germany.38 Much better known than these Jewish refugees were members of the political and cultural elite who made Czechoslova kia a center of their anti-Nazi activity. The leadership of the Social Democratic Party of Germany in exile (SoPaDe) and certain artists, like John Heartfield, for a while at least enjoyed unofficial protection. By contrast, most of the less connected “political” refugees were left to fend for themselves in these years. The experience of Helene Ehrlich well illustrates this, in addition to the gender aspects of being a refugee. Together with her parents and two children, Ehrlich escaped to Prague from Nuremberg in 1933, after being fired from her position in the local cremation society— most likely because she was Jewish and a Social Democratic activist. Born in Prague, she had lost her Czechoslovak citizenship when she married, thereby becoming a Bavarian (and by extension German) national. Back in her homeland, she was treated as a foreigner by the authorities, even though her husband had divorced her and was living in the United States.39 Another example is Ernst Goldstein, who escaped to Prague in the spring of 1933 by hiking through the Giant Mountains (Krkonoše/Riesengebirge) and successfully avoiding the German border patrols. Although he was apparently on the run in Nazi Germany as a communist, he told the Prague police that he had been persecuted as a Jew, because Czechoslovakia officially barred entry to German communists. During his life in Prague, he was registered as a refugee by the Šalda Committee, which assisted leftist refugees and was named after F. X. Šalda, a well-known literary critic. In 1936, however, Goldstein was detained by the police for political activity and brought to the Austrian border, which he was then forced to cross illegally. Within several weeks he was again detained in Prague—showing how such police measures made refugees into illegal immigrants.40 Up until the Munich Agreement, in late September 1938, the official number of refugees from Germany in Czechoslova kia was about ten thousand, and it is likely a similar number of refugees never registered with a refugee committee. While local politicians often paid lip ser vice to a purported tradition of asylum as an indispensable aspect of Czechoslovak democracy, the reality of just how welcome refugees were was far more complex. With no clearly formulated definitions of “refugee” and “asylum,” the authorities had a free hand to tolerate or exclude those coming from Germany and Austria. In practice this meant offering unofficial protection to members of the political and cultural

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elite, on the one hand, while allowing the majority of other refugees to remain only until further notice, conditional upon their refraining from gainful activity and politics. Like other European countries, Czechoslovakia saw itself as a way station rather than as a place of settlement. Moreover, Czechoslovak refugee policy unfolded as a dynamic process rather than an established set of rules. The state, and also large parts of society, had been quite liberal when the refugee crisis began in 1933 but became increasingly intolerant by the second half of the 1930s. Refugees were prohibited from competing in the labor market—after all, the fallout from the economic crisis was still palpable. This made them dependent on support from their families and aid committees, or on work unauthorized by the state. Kahan, for example, reportedly entered into a silent partnership in a Prague business. Ehrlich cleaned homes and offices (using a cleaning agent she claimed to have invented) and was paid under the table. The protections of the labor market also provided a framework for antisemitic and nationalist language: A house painter, formerly a neighbor of the Ehrlichs, felt compelled to send denunciations to the police targeting the German identity of the family, who were alleged to be profiteering to the detriment of Czech workers.41 The Czechoslovak authorities’ initial tolerance of German-Jewish refugees was contingent on the expectation of the refugees’ speedy emigration, often with the assistance of Jewish aid organizations. Yet in the wake of the Nuremberg Laws, and as fears mounted in the mid-1930s that Jewish immigration to Palestine would stall, Jews were increasingly seen as unwanted migrants rather than as refugees. This process resulted in a complete closure of the Czechoslovak borders to refugees starting in 1938. First fearing an invasion of Jews from Romania (which never transpired), the government, after the Anschluss of Austria by Nazi Germany in March 1938, barred the entry of all Austrian refugees. Richard A. Bermann, an Austrian writer, journalist, and opponent of the Austrian authoritarian state established in 1934, managed to get on the last train to Czechoslova kia as the Wehrmacht and the Gestapo were approaching Vienna. In his recollections he described the tense moments before the train pulled into the Czechoslovak border station at Břeclav (Lundenburg). All the greater was his surprise when the border guards forced all the roughly three hundred Austrian citizens off the train and several hours later made them board a train back to Vienna. From Břeclav, Bermann managed to send a cable to the Czechoslovak president, Edvard Beneš, appealing to the “humanity of Czechoslovak democracy.” Yet while Bermann referred to a democratic tradition of asylum for political refugees, the border guards, following instructions from Prague, treated him as an unwanted Jewish migrant. Jews were increasingly considered not citizens but rather de facto stateless “Eastern Jews.” The erosion of Jewish citizenship in Germany, but also in

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Czechoslova kia and other states in east-central Europe, led to the proliferation of refugee no man’s lands.42 By the time of the Munich Agreement, Jewish refugees were linked in the public imagination to the destabilization of the Czechoslovak nation-state. The closure of borders to Jewish refugees also highlighted the dilemmas and increasingly incompatible loyalties of local Jewish organizations as well as liberal democratic forces, such as the weekly Přítomnost, edited by Ferdinand Peroutka. In January  1938 the journal opposed the entry of Romanian Jewish refugees, and as the crisis of 1938 unfolded, it adopted the Czech nationalist position, refusing the settlement of Germanspeaking Jewish refugees from Austria and, later, from the Sudetenland.43

Multiple Jewries In the spring of 1920, Eduard (Edvard) Lederer, a prominent representative of the Czech-Jewish movement and a high-ranking bureaucrat at the Czechoslovak Ministry of Education and Culture, traveled to Slovakia and Subcarpathian Rus to gather intelligence and inform state officials, among others, about the situation of the local Jews, who were often perceived by Jews and non-Jews in the Bohemian Lands as exotic, traditional, backward and poor. As Lederer stressed in his report, many Jews of former Upper Hungary (now Slovakia) perceived their co-religionists in the western parts of Czechoslova kia as “unbelievers.” These divisions notwithstanding, Lederer adopted an integrative approach: Jews in both eastern parts, Slovakia and Subcarpathian Rus, were already “honest citizens of our republic.”44 Czechoslova kia, like any modern state, was interested in establishing unity and employed the population census as a homogenizing measure. Yet religious differences between the western and eastern parts of Czechoslova kia remained: While the Jews of the Bohemian Lands differed mainly along linguistic, national, and geographic lines, the Jews of Slovakia and Subcarpathian Rus were historically divided into three branches of Judaism (Orthodox, Neolog, and Status Quo Ante). With about 355,000 Jews by religion, 2.6  percent of the total population, Czechoslova kia was one of the European countries with a medium-sized Jewish population, geographically close to the centers of Jewish life in Poland and Soviet Russia.45 The demographic patterns, settlement structure, socioeconomic situation, and religious and national affiliations of the Jews in Bohemia, Moravia-Silesia,46 Slovakia, and Subcarpathian Rus clearly differed. Nevertheless, a description of Czechoslovak Jews with reference solely to this seemingly clear line between west and east European Jewish culture does not allow one to

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fully grasp the varieties, changes, and entanglements of Jewish Lebenswelten in interwar Czechoslova kia. The Jews of Bohemia and of Moravia-Silesia—with about 80,000 (2.3 percent of the total population) and 45,000 Jewish inhabitants (1.4  percent), respectively, in 1921—constituted a small group relative to the total Czechoslovak population. Since the second half of the nineteenth century, they had been undergoing rapid urbanization and now faced demographic decline, which increased during the First Republic and triggered heated discussions among experts. As in other central and west European countries, this decline, was caused by a decrease in the birth rate among Jews in the Bohemian Lands, which could not be compensated for, given the low level of immigration.47 This decline was, however, uneven: Bohemia and parts of Moravia-Silesia were among the most urbanized and industrialized regions in central Europe, and most of the Jews, like their non-Jewish neighbors, lived in cities. Prague, with about thirty-two thousand Jewish inhabitants (by religion), was the demographic center of the Jews of Czechoslova kia. But Jews constituted only about 4 percent of the total population of the Czechoslovak capital. Though attracting immigration from elsewhere in Czechoslova kia, Prague differed from other big cities in interwar Europe in its lack of major immigration from outside the country. While the Prague district of Josefov (Josefstadt) remained the symbolic Jewish center, where synagogues, the Jewish Town Hall, and Jewish organizations were located, the majority of Jews in Prague already lived outside the historical city center, especially at the borders of the New Town, and in the former suburbs of Vinohrady (Weinberge), Smíchov (Smichow), and Karlín. Moravian Jews had their urban center in the provincial capital of Brno, with about ten thousand Jewish inhabitants. In contrast to that of Prague, the modern Jewish community of Brno was not founded until the abolition of settlement restrictions in the 1860s. Like Moravská Ostrava, the second urban center of Jews in interwar Moravia-Silesia, Brno had benefited from rapid industrialization since the second half of the nineteenth century, and remained a flourishing economic and cultural center in the interwar years. The concentration in cities led to a dramatic decline in the Jewish population of small towns and villages in the countryside. In the 1930s only about 17  percent of the Jewish population in Bohemia and 15  percent of MoraviaSilesia, most of them aging, still lived in small rural towns and villages.48 Although urbanization in the Bohemian Lands had reached its climax before 1914, the depopulation of rural communities became most obvious during the interwar period. Formerly impor tant Jewish communities like Kolín (Kolin)

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or Brandýs nad Labem (Brandeis an der Elbe), in central Bohemia, dwindled. Dozens of smaller Jewish communities in Bohemia had to close down or were merged with nearby communities. The number of Jewish communities in Bohemia thus dropped from 205 in 1921 to about 170 in the 1930s.49 A similar process took place in Moravia-Silesia, where most Jews formerly lived in small towns. Towns with a long tradition of Jewish communities—for instance in Boskovice (Boskowitz), Holešov, and Mikulov (Nikolsburg)—dramatically lost their Jewish inhabitants in the decades before and after World War I.50 The demographic situation in Slovakia and Subcarpathian Rus was in many ways different. More Jews lived in Slovakia (about 136,000 in 1930) than in Bohemia and Moravia-Silesia together, although Slovakia had only about half the population of the Bohemian Lands. Subcarpathian Rus had about 100,000 Jewish inhabitants in 1930. In contrast to Bohemia and Moravia-Silesia, Slovakia continued to have a more mixed urban and rural Jewish population, and the urbanization of Jews got stronger in the interwar period. Bratislava, formerly Poszony (Pressburg), in western Slovakia, and Košice, formerly Kassa (Kaschau), in eastern Slovakia, were the two dominant cities in this part of Czechoslovakia. Despite a few urban centers like Užhorod (Ungvár) and Mukačevo (Munkács), Jews (as well as their non-Jewish neighbors) in Subcarpathian Rus lived mainly in villages and small rural towns. The migration and other demographic changes of Jews in the Bohemian Lands since the second half of the nineteenth century had a deep impact on their socioeconomic situation.51 Even though the census of 1921 still showed most Jews as self-employed in trade, commerce, industry, or liberal professions,52 the migration to cities led to a remarkable decline in the number of Jewish shopkeepers and merchants in the countryside, and their children did not follow in their parents’ footsteps. A survey by Praga, a Prague branch of B’nai B’rith in the late 1920s found that the Jews in the Bohemian Lands followed the “Western” path: They were no longer dominant in trade and commerce, and their share in these vocations also declined in their new urban homes. The author of the survey, Luděk Dux, therefore saw no need for an extensive restructuring of occupational patterns in the western part of Czechoslovakia, in contrast to its eastern parts.53 Nevertheless, the limited scope of census data makes it hard to reconstruct a nuanced and dynamic picture of the socioeconomic situation of the Jews of Czechoslova kia. The absence of reliable data enabled speculation and public debate among non-Jewish and Jewish experts at the time about the “decline of the Jewish population” of the Bohemian Lands. For instance, the leading Czech expert, Antonín Boháč, implicitly took on the scenario of demographic and cultural despair that had already been drawn for Jews in Germany by the Zionist author Felix Theilhaber before World War I, and exaggerated it. But

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Friedrich Thieberger, a leading member of B’nai B’rith in Czechoslova kia, pointed to the limited validity of statistics in general and of demographic forecasts in particular.54 National affiliation in the census remained the most contested category within the public discourse of the multiethnic nation-state, and the exception that had been granted to the Jews became a source of continuing controversy.55 The question of Jewish nationality had a deep impact on everyday life. For Ilse Weber, for example, this was one of the “worst” questions. In a private letter from 1936, she reported on a conversation with her six-year-old son, Hanuš, who was not satisfied with her answer that their family was Jewish. Hanuš asked again, what kind of Jews, Czech or German? Ilse’s answer was: Czechoslovak Jews.56 Many Jews experienced this dilemma and offered varying answers in the census forms, depending on their individual experience, social networks, and regional background: In contrast to the rest of the country, nearly half of the Jews of Bohemia responding to the 1930 census gave Czechoslovak as their nationality (that is, Czech was their mother tongue). About a third declared German and only 20 percent Jewish nationality. Although the individual motives behind the answers may have differed, the numbers suggest not only that the Jews of Bohemia were linguistically mixed but also that a high number of them used Czech as their primary language. Again, there were significant regional differences, and in the border areas of northern Bohemian, most of the Jews preferred German as their language of daily use and thus declared their nationality as German in the census form. A positive tendency toward Jewish nationality in 1930 did not automatically mean a growing allegiance to Zionism or Jewish nationalism. It also offered an opportunity to express the everyday bonds to Jewish culture and tradition, or to avoid declaring another nationality, or both. In contrast to the Jews of Bohemia, nearly half of the Moravian-Silesian Jews thus declared Jewish as their nationality, a third declared German, and 17 percent declared Czechoslovak. Moravia was a primary center of Czechoslovak Zionism, but many nonZionist Moravian Jews maintained a sense of identity that was rooted in the long tradition of Jewish settlement in small towns, including the former Jewish political communities. Their self-identification was often closely connected to German language and culture, and although the number of Jews of German nationality was diminished in the 1930 census compared to the 1921 census, German cultural background remained an important point of reference.57 Consequently, the Czech-Jewish integrationist movement had only modest success in Moravia-Silesia even in the interwar period, although the attachment to the Czech language and Czechoslovak nationality increased among Moravian Jews in the 1930s.

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The situation in Slovakia was somewhat similar to that in Moravia-Silesia. About half of the Jews in Slovakia declared Jewish nationality in the 1930 census, while a third of all Slovak Jews declared Czechoslovak nationality, and only 7 percent declared Hungarian or German nationality. These numbers reveal the linguistic diversity of Jews in this part of the country as much as they conceal it. While Hungarian nationality among Jews had, according to the statistics, indeed declined, Hungarian remained the preferred language of daily communication among the generations born before 1918. On the other hand, younger Jews who studied in the new Czechoslovak school system increasingly used Slovak. With regional variations, German and Yiddish remained important, too. The vast majority of Jews in Subcarpathian Rus—about 93 percent—chose Jewish nationality in 1930. Only 6 percent declared Hungarian and 1 percent Czechoslovak nationality. The low share of Czechoslovak nationality is not surprising: Neither the Czech nor the Slovak language played a significant role in the everyday communication of Subcarpathian Jews, who mainly spoke Yiddish and Hungarian.58 Whereas the census draws a static picture, the country would more accurately be viewed as a transitional space in which Jews and non-Jews passed through or settled down. The annual report of the Jewish Central Office for Social Welfare (Židovská ústředna pro sociální péči) for 1930 called care for “transients” (Durchreisende, migrants) the most important task of the present.59 Border towns like Náchod (Nachod) in east Bohemia or Děčín-Podmokly (Tetschen-Bodenbach) in north Bohemia especially had served since the late nineteenth century as impor tant transit points for Jewish migrants and refugees from Eastern Europe on their way to Vienna or Western Europe. Many migrants, and later refugees from Nazi Germany and Austria, stopped in the urban centers of Prague, Brno, and Moravská Ostrava before moving on. Many Jewish students from the eastern parts of Czechoslova kia as well as from Poland, Hungary, and Romania, often driven by the numerus clausus restrictions in these countries, graduated from the universities in Prague and Brno. Many workers moved for a certain time to Bohemian and Moravian industrial cities before returning home, moving on, or settling down.60 Whereas family ties between the western and eastern parts of Czechoslovakia still had yet to be developed, older connections across the new state borders between the Bohemian Lands and Austria and among Slovakia, Subcarpathian Rus, and Hungary remained alive. Many Jews born in the Bohemian Lands, who were thus automatically granted Czechoslovak citizenship, lived outside Czechoslovakia, especially in Vienna and Berlin; others decided to come back for professional or family reasons, or both, already in the early 1920s. The rate of Jewish emigration from Czechoslova kia was lower than from other European countries, but it grew especially among Subcarpathian and

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Slovak Jews in the 1920s. According to estimates, about ten thousand Jews left Czechoslova kia between 1921 and 1930. Around 1930 they immigrated mainly to the United States, Argentina, other European countries, and Palestine.61 The emigration of Czechoslovak Jews did not become a mass phenomenon, however, until the autumn of 1938, when the existence of the Czechoslovak Republic was seriously threatened by Nazi Germany, and Jews feared for their future if they remained there.

Communities in Flux As a result of the dramatic changes in Jewish religious life, including liturgical practices, in the long nineteenth century, contemporaries in the interwar years lamented the lukewarm attitudes of many Bohemian, Moravian, and Silesian Jews toward religion. The western parts of Czechoslovakia especially became increasingly secular, not least under the impact of the anticlerical attitudes of Masaryk and his non-Jewish and Jewish followers. Many Jews in the Bohemian Lands thus understood religion primarily as a matter of ethics. Yet Jewish religious life remained vibrant in places with major Jewish communities, often with considerable local variation reflecting the shifting spatial patterns. In Prague, for example, the rabbis in the city center and especially in Josefov criticized the low attendance at the synagogues, whereas the synagogues in the former suburbs Vinohrady, Smíchov, and Libeň, where mostly Jewish migrants from the Bohemian countryside were settling, saw greater turnout.62 Yet religious traditions and other aspects of Jewish culture still played an important role in everyday life in parts of Jewish society, mainly due to the persisting “habits” of older generations. A good example of this is the life of Fritz Beer, who grew up in a Germanspeaking, liberal Jewish family in Brno. Fritz became familiar with many of the Jewish religious customs and rituals thanks to his grandfather, who lived with the family after he was widowed. His grandfather also frequently made Fritz attend synagogue.63 By contrast, Ruth Klinger and her family in the Prague district of Karlín regularly attended synagogue and went to the cemetery, but did not keep a kosher kitchen, and their knowledge of Judaism was rather superficial. As a result of urbanization, religious practice was becoming harder to maintain, particularly in the countryisde. The number of prayer houses and synagogues declined dramatically, and rabbis, teachers, and cantors often had to work in multiple locations. Wilma Iggers, for example, never experienced an intense communal Jewish life in her west Bohemian village. Her family visited the prayer house in the neighboring town only on High Holidays (Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur), as well as on a yahrzeit, the anniversary of the death of

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a close family member. The recollections of Beer, Iggers, Klinger, and many others testify to the variety of attachments to religion and religious practice in the interwar Bohemian Lands. The transformation of religious customs, which had started even before World War I, gained currency during the 1920s and 1930s. A good example is the memorial practices that help mourners to cope with the loss of a close relative, which can be meaningful also for those with only a little interest in Judaism. Memorial albums explaining and guiding one through Jewish traditions of mourning remained popu lar in the Bohemian Lands. Whereas such albums in the late nineteenth century did use single Hebrew words to name customs and holidays,64 those printed during the interwar period avoided Hebrew.65 Moreover, commentaries and rabbinical explanations were abridged or omitted, illustrating a shift to a mere adherence to the form rather than the religious content of tradition.66 Important changes to communal administration, education, social welfare, gender roles, and youth culture in the Bohemian Lands continued the developments in Jewish life before 1914, but they gained new dynamics with the breakdown of the imperial order and the creation of a democratic nation-state in an increasingly globalized world. On the one hand, Zionists played a major role in this reshaping of Jewish community life; on the other, this was accompanied by the increasing use of the Czech language. Nevertheless, “trilingualism”—Czech, German, and Hebrew—remained important, as Alois Hilf, the future president of the Federation of Moravian Jewish Communities, explained to the Ministry of Education and National Culture in 1923. Czech became the official language of the federation, but, according to its president, German and Hebrew continued to be important for communication with its members.67 Jewish officials and Zionists in particular were engaged in a revival of Hebrew, the use of which had remarkably declined since the second half of the nineteenth century. Multilingualism also characterized everyday life, especially in the eastern parts of Czechoslovakia. But pressure, particularly from Czech-Jewish integrationists, to use Czech as the only language in Jewish communal life in the Bohemian Lands notably increased in the 1930s.68 The “conquest of the communities,” as Theodor Herzl proclaimed in the late nineteenth century, remained one of the declared goals of Zionist politics, although in the following years, more emphasis was placed on the establishment of Zionist organizations outside the formal Jewish communities.69 Zionists in Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia made considerable efforts to reshape the Kultusgemeinden into Volksgemeinden—that is, modern institutions that would, apart from fulfilling religious duties, emphasize ethnic identity in the notable expansion of its educational, welfare, and cultural agendas. The plans for the unification and centralization of communities followed to some degree French and German

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models, and it was demanded not only by the Zionists but also by their nonZionist opponents. Jewish communal politics in the Bohemian Lands between the world wars were thus mainly characterized by difficult negotiations and the search for compromises between Zionist and non-Zionist, Czech and German, secular and religious Jews.70 Even before the breakup of the Habsburg monarchy, the Jewish communities in Cisleithania had attempted, but ultimately failed, to create (trans)regional federations. Yet the Israelitengesetz of 1890 did not envisage central organizations that would defuse the tensions between larger urban and smaller rural communities. After the end of World War I, Jewish officials, especially in Moravia, intensified the efforts to create such federations. Yet it took until the mid-1920s for the state to approve officially five regional federations: in Moravia (1924), in Silesia and Prague (both in 1925), and in the Czech- and German-speaking communities of Bohemia (both in 1927, but active since 1924). In 1926 their representatives established the Supreme Council of the Jewish Religious Communities in Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia, which was recognized by the Czechoslovak state as the official representative body of the Jewish communities of the Bohemian Lands. Because of the continued effects of the Israelitengesetz, however, the federations and the supreme council lacked full legal authority, and membership remained voluntary.71 Only the 1937 law on the organization of Jewish communities in Bohemia and Moravia-Silesia fully legalized the federations and the supreme council as supracommunal organizations responsible for affairs that exceeded the jurisdiction of a single community.72 Yet the creation of a central Czechoslovak organization failed, because of the existing differences in communal organization and the refusal of Orthodox communities in Slovakia and Subcarpathian Rus to join. The attempts to centralize communal structures were accompanied by a process of democratization. But that proceeded at a slow pace. The introduction of universal suffrage at least formally enabled members to vote for candidates and be elected to the council of a religious community irrespective of economic, social, and gender criteria. The community of Moravská Ostrava was, for example, one of the few where, in 1919, two women were immediately elected to the council. The Zionist activist Arnošt (Ernst) Frischer from Moravská Ostrava thus appealed to his Zionist colleagues in the Bohemian Lands to work more closely with other community factions for the creation of a democratic Jewish Volksgemeinde. At the center of these aims (which were not only Zionist) stood education. With the arrival of young East European refugees during World War I, the attempts to launch a cultural “Jewish renaissance” gained new dynamism, especially in the field of education. It was a response to the general perception of

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a religious and cultural “decline” among central European Jews, which was expressed most vocally in Weimar Germany.73 In harmony with cultural Zionist ideas as formulated, for example, by Martin Buber, Moravian and Bohemian Zionists around Alfred Engel and Max and Elsa Brod quickly established a dense educational framework for young war refugees. For the first time, these intellectuals experienced practical Zionist work in close contact with children, whom they admired for their close attachment to Jewish religion and culture.74 Engel, a teacher and official of the Jewish school office (Schulkanzlei) in Prague, looked for suitable schoolrooms around the country, and selected teachers (mainly from among refugees) and textbooks. In 1917 he reported about fiftyfive schoolrooms for four thousand Jewish children in Bohemia, from Prague to small towns.75 These wartime activities of the Zionists established the basis for the restructuring of the Jewish educational system in the first years of the republic. The Jewish Party, especially, aimed to reverse the disappearance of Jewish schools. In Bohemia public Jewish schools were closed down already at the end of the nineteenth century, and the public schools of the dissolved Jewish political communities in Moravia ceased to exist as Jewish schools. In contrast to the dense network of Jewish schools in Slovakia and Subcarpathian Rus run by the communities, only five private “national” Jewish schools in the Bohemian Lands were created: three elementary schools in Prague, Brno, and Moravská Ostrava, a secondary school in Brno, and a vocational school in Moravská Ostrava. These schools were partly funded by the communities, partly through tuition fees, and as in the case of Brno, also by the municipality. In Prague, Czech was the main language of instruction from the beginning; in Brno and Moravská Ostrava, German was gradually replaced by Czech from the late 1920s onward. Despite their limited number, these schools became important sites for Jewish cultural activities aimed at a reformulation of modern Jewish education in interwar Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia.76 Yet the majority of Jewish children in the Bohemian Lands attended public schools with Czech or German as languages of instruction. In large communities, children received weekly instruction in religion, including limited exposure to Hebrew, but in the countryside this was less regular. The Czech-Jewish rabbi Richard Feder, himself from a poor rural Jewish family in central Bohemia, was particularly committed to the renewal of Jewish education and to awakening students’ interest in learning Hebrew. As a rabbi in the small towns of Roudnice and Louny before World War I, he authored a textbook of modern Hebrew that was focused on modern, everyday communication, while also including vocabulary for religious practice. Later, when he became a rabbi in the venerable Jewish community of Kolín, Feder revised his textbook and published several smaller books on Jewish religion and history. His multilingual

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interests—as an author of a Hebrew textbook, as a rabbi who used mainly Czech within the community, and as a teacher of German at the Kolín Commercial Academy—illustrate that integration into Czechoslovak society, rather than being one-dimensional, entailed multiple cultural bonds.77 Gustav Sicher became the rabbi of the Prague district of Vinohrady in 1927. He was an impor tant proponent of traditional Judaism in the Bohemian Lands, and he took a keen interest in modern Jewish education that combined traditional rabbinical knowledge, contemporary Jewish subjects (like Hebrew literature), and pedagogical skills. In February 1934 he traveled to Mukačevo to participate in a commission examining future rabbis and teachers of religion in Subcarpathian Rus.78 It is fair to see Sicher’s journey as an attempt to spread his educational ideas to a region that was often perceived as peripheral and backward. He too harbored certain “colonial” attitudes when he promoted the knowledge of Czech, a language not used in Subcarpathian Rus before 1918. Insisting on teaching children in Czech, he was not satisfied with the linguistic progress of the candidates. In his view only four of the seven were able to teach in Czech, whereas three could teach only in a German-speaking school.79 Moreover, Sicher was struck by the insufficient knowledge of shehitah (ritual slaughtering); even the best candidate was not up to his standard.80 Sicher blamed the rabbi of Mukačevo for failing to encourage Jewish students to learn from the local shohet and suggested that future teachers and rabbis study the proper way of shehitah in Moravská Ostrava or Prague. Sicher’s notion of the “true” Orthodoxy revealed the deep gap between the Lebenswelten of traditional Subcarpathian Jewry and Jewish enthusiasts from outside who, while coming mainly from secular Bohemian surroundings, saw themselves as “saviors and educators”81 of their eastern brethren. When the latter arrived in Bohemia, mainly to attend Charles University, they were often shocked by the religious ignorance of their western coreligionists. Social welfare, an integral part of Jewish community life, was also confronted with new challenges in the course of World War I, and the mass flight of Jews from Galicia and Bukovina, in the course of the deepening economic and social crises in interwar Europe, and in the course of the mass flight from Nazi Germany beginning in 1933. In the summer of 1937, Marie Schmolka (Schmolková, née Eisner) summarized the efforts and limits of Jewish welfare in Czechoslovakia, against the background of European and global developments. Marie Schmolka was born into the Prague Jewish family of a textile merchant. She became not only an energetic activist of the Women’s International Zionist Organization (WIZO), but also—indeed above all—an important coordinator of refugee relief. Together with Hanna Steiner(ová) and Chaim Hoffmann (later Chaim Yahil), Schmolka headed the Czechoslovak branch of the HICEM, Aid

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Figure 19. Marie Schmolka, passport photo, 1930s. © National Archive, Prague.

Agency for Jewish Emigrants and Emigrants in Transit. She called for the modernization of social work to be efficient, coordinated, and globally oriented.82 Schmolka formulated this need for reform of Jewish welfare with a new clarity and urgency, yet her ideas were not completely new.83 Already in the early 1920s, the Jewish Central Office for Social Welfare in the Czechoslovak Republic (Židovská ústředna pro sociální péči v Československé republice), headed by Josef Popper, the president of the B’nai B’rith order in Czechoslova kia, was established by the Jewish National Council to strengthen social welfare and to co-

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ordinate local, national, and transnational welfare activities and organizations.84 Thousands of transmigrants, mostly from Eastern Europe, became the main focus of its activity in the 1920s. The Central Office supported their travel westward by providing train tickets at Wilson Station (today’s main station) in Prague to avoid their staying longer than necessary in the city. It also participated in the foundation of the Central European Task Force of Transmigrants.85 Nevertheless, it lacked regionwide authority. The Social Institute of the Jewish Communities of Greater Prague (Sociální ústav náboženských obcí židovských Velké Prahy) was established in 1935 with the aim of reorganizing and coordinating social relief, especially for migrants and refugees in the Czechoslovak capital. The institute achieved particular success in the field of social work for youth and built, together with the Jewish Career Guidance Center (Židovská poradna pro volbu povolání), a central database of unemployed youth. Jewish youth from Subcarpathian Rus and Slovakia posed another important challenge for Jewish welfare. Already in the late 1920s, members of the WIZO, among them its director Hanna Steiner, Marie Schmolka, Elsa Engländer, and Vally Waldstein, initiated an aid committee for Subcarpathian Rus. With the support of the Joint Distribution Committee, they mainly distributed material help to numerous Subcarpathian villages and small towns. In the early 1920s and again in the middle of the 1930s, the welfare activities of various organizations, especially Zionist ones like Hashachar (The dawn) and He-Haluts (The pioneer), also focused on emigration and provided vocational training, partly in settlements—for instance in the small Silesian border town of Krnov—to prepare Jewish youth mainly from Subcarpathian Rus and Slovakia for aliyah.86 This institutional framework for welfare activities became crucial for Jewish refugee relief in the 1930s. In the spring of 1933, just after the Nazis came to power in Germany, the Aid Committee for Jewish Refugees and Emigrants from Germany was set up, and in 1936 HICEM became the leading force in Jewish refugee relief, mainly organized by Schmolka and Steiner. Schmolka earned considerable respect among non-Jewish refugee relief organizations at home and abroad, and was consequently appointed to head the Comité national Tchécoslovaque pour les réfugiés provenant d’Allemagne (in the following Comité national), which was established at the League of Nations in 1933 at the request of the High Commissioner for Refugees (Jewish and Other) Coming from Germany. The Comité national sought to unify the work of the various Jewish and non-Jewish relief organizations, since they were often split along confessional and political lines. Even though liberal democratic, social democratic, and communist organizations often refused to work together, thanks to the spontaneous help of local activists and mainly the highly engaged work of leading

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social workers like Schmolka and Steiner, thousands of Jewish and non-Jewish refugees from Germany and Austria found a temporary home in Czechoslova kia and received help with further emigration. The refugee relief was also applied to Czechoslovak citizens returning home because of persecution in Germany and Austria but who had no or few family ties in their country of origin.87 The achievements of these organizations in providing welfare for transmigrants, Jewish youth, and refugees in the 1920s and 1930s were a result in large part of the growing participation of women in key positions. Schmolka and Steiner initiated the transformation of traditional Jewish welfare into modern social work. Eventually, their selfless commitment and their local and international networking laid the foundations for the organization of the flight of Czechoslovak Jews into exile in 1938–39.88 The breakthrough of female welfare activists in the interwar republic was not by chance. It is widely recognized that World War I marked a shift in women’s history, which became clearly visible in everyday life. The entry of women into the labor market when men were enlisted to fight in the war had a great impact not only on their self-image but also on their appearance. Before 1914 girls and women wore uncomfortably long, large dresses, but now skirts were shortened and cut to fit comfortably.89 Jewish women took part in these general changes, although old role models persisted, at least in part. As in the past, Jewish women were responsible for the transmission of religious traditions to their children. While religious practice played only a minor role for Bohemian and Moravian Jews, and a growing number of community members married non-Jewish partners during the First Republic,90 Judaism remained an important identity marker that was adapted to various linguistic, ethnic, and national concepts. This is illustrated by the influential Czechoslovak Jewish newspaper for women, the Blätter für die jüdische Frau (The Jewish woman’s mail), a monthly supplement of the Zionist weekly Selbstwehr edited by Hanna Steiner between 1925 and 1938. Even more than the editorials, which mostly dealt with WIZO activities, the reviews and advertisements are particularly revealing. Although the paper targeted Zionist readers, a broad range of topics were discussed; special attention was drawn to the legal situation of women, which apparently reflected the needs of many female readers. Good examples are the book recommendations for the summer holidays in 1935.91 About half a page was devoted to Edith Ringwald’s Familie Heberlin (The Heberlin family, 1935),92 a novel that discusses women’s rights as spouses and the way to deal with daily problems that were frequently faced by housewives—for example, purchasing goods from a sales agent without the explicit permission of one’s husband.93

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When women were denied the right to vote in the community elections in Prague in 1935, the Blätter für die jüdische Frau criticized the decision as incomprehensible and suggested its revision. In descriptions of specific female activities, however, the magazine was conservative. Instead of mentioning the tax contribution of working women to the community, as supporters of women’s suffrage had typically done,94 the newspaper highlighted traditional roles in family life, such as the education of children and the revival of Jewish holiday customs. Courses in Hebrew correspondence published in the Blätter, which would enable one to start up a simple conversation and to understand short stories,95 point in the same direction: While women should join their husbands in learning the language, their role was to promote Hebrew in the family. In line with the liberal attitude of the Blätter toward religion, its references to Jewish tradition and women as its gatekeepers could be playful. An advertisement for kosher margarine, for example, shows a Seder table at Passover,96 at which the four sons are asking about the food and its delicious taste, and thanking their mother for having prepared the dishes with vegetable fat. Young socialist Zionists (and, later, often communists) took a more radical approach to changing gender roles and rebelled against the bourgeois and patriarchal households of their parents. Members of pioneer organizations like Tekhelet Lavan and Ha-Shomer ha-Tsair (The Young Guard) believed in building a new Jewish society based on national consciousness, social justice, physical health and strength, and, at least in Tekhelet Lavan, Jewish education. The youth organizations were inspired by similar non-Jewish scouting organizations, but also offered a specifically Jewish cultural program for the creation of a new society in Palestine. The idea of a “new Jewish woman” as well as a “new Jewish man” appealed to many young people of various social backgrounds who were searching for the social and cultural rootedness their families and social surroundings were unable to provide. For example, Fritz Beer, who joined Tekhelet Lavan in Brno in the 1920s, later recalled the power ful impact of these organizations: “It was my first experience and it was overwhelming: friends, as many as I wanted, wherever a group of our union existed, in Brno and Prague, in Aussig or Vienna; friends who thought and felt like me, who doubted themselves and looked for something like I was looking for. Who took me seriously.”97 The values of these socialist organizations often laid the foundations for communist convictions, especially among members who did not want to immigrate to Palestine. Eduard Goldstücker (a native of Slovakia who moved to Prague in the 1930s and later became a leading expert on Kafka), for example, was, like Beer, a member of Tekhelet Lavan before he joined the Communist Party.98 Whereas the Zionist youth activists—from the left-wing organizations as well as the right-wing Betar—thought of themselves as the elite and “vanguard

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of the Jewish nation,” the leaders of sports organizations like Maccabi and Hagibor appealed to Jewish youth in a broader sense. Maccabi created its own neutral, “all-Jewish” youth organization called Maccabi ha-Tsair, which attracted mainly young Jews who did not necessarily want to become Zionists. Furthermore, it assuaged parents who were afraid of the perceived radicalism of these Zionist youth organizations. Nevertheless, Maccabi also contributed to the creation of new role models for young women and men, highlighting the importance of physical health and strength for the renewal of the Jewish national community.99

Kafka, Golem, and Exoticism When, on June 6, 1924, the Czech daily Národní listy published the obituary of a Prague native German writer who had, just short of his forty-first birthday, died of tuberculosis in a sanatorium in Kierling, near Vienna, few readers would have recognized the name Franz Kafka. At that time nobody could have anticipated that Kafka would eventually become an emblem of modern “Jewish” Prague. Yet in this obituary Milena Jesenská, Kafka’s first translator into Czech, already declares Kafka to be part of world literature because of the universal questions he raises and his trenchant analysis of the paradoxes of the modern age.100 The readers of Národní listy did not learn that Kafka was Jewish or that he was interested in Zionism, Yiddish, and Hebrew. Nevertheless, the obituary by Jesenská is an impressive testimony to the intense and fragile relations between Jews and non-Jews, which often remained “below the threshold of articulation.”101 Jesenská was born into a Czech family of a dental surgeon and started to socialize with German-speaking Jewish intellectuals already while a student at the prestigious girl’s grammar school Minerva in Prague. She got to know the writers Max Brod and Franz Werfel, and between 1919 and 1923 she carried on a formidable correspondence with Kafka, whom she personally met on only two occasions. Fifteen years later, in 1938–39, Jesenská was among those who helped Jewish intellectuals and artists to leave Czechoslova kia in time, including her ex-husband Ernst Pollak (from 1938 on, Polak), a German-Jewish translator and philosopher.102 Aside from the better-known German Jewish writers in Prague, who had a larger audience abroad than at home, Czech Jewish intellectual and popular culture also had its heyday in interwar Czechoslova kia. About eighty years after the publication of the first Czech Jewish poetry by Siegfried Kapper, Czech Jewish authors had become an integral part of the Czech literary canon, even though their literary quality was still sometimes disputed, as the nationalist and antisemitic criticism of the dramatist Otokar Fischer in late 1917 demonstrated.

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Figure 20. Franz Kafka, seated, second from right, at a health resort in Tatranské Matliare, in the High Tatras, Slovakia, 1921. © akg-images/Archive of Klaus Wagenbach.

Multiple identities of Jewishness as well as the dissolution of the bonds to Judaism in the post-emancipation age were discussed in Czech and German Jewish fiction before and after World War I. The relations between Jews and non-Jews were less obviously negotiated in Jewish popu lar fiction and culture—including films, theater, and cabaret plays—which often addressed a larger, not only Jewish audience. By contrast, popular culture with a distinctly Jewish identity—for example, the Yiddish cabaret Kaftan, founded by Maxim Sakaschansky and his wife, Ruth Klinger—had limited success in the Bohemian Lands. When they toured Central Europe, including Ruth’s native Czechoslovakia, they drew audiences worth mentioning only in Slovakia and Subcarpathian Rus. Ruth later recalled that the sole time they experienced a lively and mixed Jewish audience in the Bohemian Lands was in Moravská Ostrava, thanks to its proximity to Poland and especially Galicia. The Czechoslovak capital was less enthusiastic about them. As the Prager Tagblatt wrote in the spring of 1932, the cabaret offered an interesting, but “exotic” and sometimes idolized “pure folklore [echte Volkskunst],” whose characters are “passionate, pious, simple-minded [einfältig], and naive.”103 Cultural stereotypes thus often prevented a more open-minded reception.

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In contrast to the tiny audiences of Kaftan, another cabaret had become iconic within the First Republic’s Czech popu lar culture and was long remembered by non-Jews and Jews, German and Czech-speaking natives alike: the leftist Osvobozené divadlo (Liberated Theater) in Prague, which flourished under Jan Werich, Jiří Voskovec, and Jaroslav Ježek, and was known for its political, anti-nationalist, and anti-fascist satire, avant-garde stage scenery, and professional production. Though not a Jewish cabaret, it adapted the originally Jewish legend of Rabbi Löw and his golem, which had been reinvented in early nineteenth-century Romantic Prague. The golem had an active role in the eponymous cabaret play as a companion to the Habsburg emperor Rudolph II, but his creator, Rabbi Löw, is mentioned only in the suicide note the golem addresses to him. And “Jewish” Prague served solely as a backdrop for this satire on the weakness of power. The best remembered part of the play, the “Píseň strašlivá o Golemovi” (A terrifying song about the golem), performed by Jan Werich and Jiří Voskovec, became part of Czech cultural memory and laid the foundations for further adaptations of the legend in popular culture in post– World War II Czechoslovakia. The golem thus became a part of non-Jewish popular culture.104 One of the Czechoslovak Jewish authors who broke through to a broader non-Jewish audience was the writer Karel Poláček. Growing up in a Czechspeaking Jewish family in the small northeast Bohemian town of Rychnov nad Kněžnou (Reichenau an der Knieschna), he moved to Prague to attend university in 1912. After World War I he established himself as a Czech journalist and a writer of biting satire. Though Poláček formally left the Jewish community in 1919, most of his novels deal with relations between Jews and non-Jews. His popular novel Muži v offsidu (Men offside), which was first published in both a Czech and a German daily in 1930, told the story of a well-to-do Prague Jewish textile shopkeeper, Richard Načeradec, who has a passion for soccer. This passion gets him into trouble several times, but eventually helps him to overcome his social isolation and become the fatherly friend of a poor, young, non-Jewish Czech whom he also employs in his shop. The film adaptation became one of the first successful Czech talkies of the early 1930s. Hugo Haas, a native and well-known actor at the Czech National Theatre in Prague, excels in the comic role of Načeradec and thus contributed to winning over a broader audience. Whereas the novel Muži v offsidu reminds readers of the Jewish background of Richard Načeradec, moviegoers had to decode the often stereotypical references to “Jewish” language, gestures, and behav ior. The film illustrates the persistence of socially constructed Jewish difference as a major marker with an impact on the interaction of Jews and non-Jews, male and female, in interwar

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Prague.105 Both the novel and the film were above all a tribute to Czech-Jewish integration in the everyday life of the Czechoslovak capital. This is also emphasized in the setting of the story: Traditional Jewish spaces do not play an important role, whereas spaces outside the center—where mainly Czech Jews from the countryside had settled—are extensively depicted as peaceful meeting places of non-Jews and Jews alike.106 The new geographic scope of the Bohemian Lands that together with Slovakia and Subcarpathian Rus formed the Czechoslovak state had a special effect on cultural dynamics during the interwar years. In par ticular, Subcarpathian Rus became a focus of popular and avant-garde culture in the Bohemian Lands. Jewish and non-Jewish writers and artists created an ambiguous image of this “eastern” region which attracted a broad audience. “Without exaggeration, even the most objective observer has to admit that Slovakia and Subcarpathian Rus are wonderful, and in some parts stunningly beautiful countries one has to explore,” wrote the author of a motoring guide in the late 1920s.107 Recommendations to visit the lesser-known landscapes and towns of Czechoslovakia that had been part of Hungary before 1918 appeared regularly in the Czech and the German press. Travel reports in both languages show the deep impression the journey to the “east” made on visitors from the Bohemian Lands. But in the eyes of most tourists, the beauty and history of Subcarpathian Rus in particular also had a dark side. Complaints about the “backwardness” and poverty of the region based on its infrastructural, economic, educational, and medical standards were notorious. As a motoring guide noted, “horses [were] the greatest enemies of automobilism”108—a statement neatly contrasting the rural life of Subcarpathian Rus with the technological progress of the newly created Czechoslovak state. No wonder that Subcarpathian Rus so often served as an exotic locale for those who wanted to experience adventures “at home.” The Jewish inhabitants of the region were part of this narrative. As a rule, their “otherness” compared to Western Jews is highlighted, either because they segregated themselves from non-Jewish society or because they were still observant and kept ancient religious traditions. When the Prague Zionist journalist Hans Lichtwitz (1906–89; later Uri Naor) visited Subcarpathian Rus in 1935, he noticed a growing gap between Jews and non-Jews.109 The Jewish population was no longer rooted in the country and its history; instead, local Jews suffered under increasing Ruthenian nationalism and antisemitism.110 While the new political order offered the Slavic-speaking inhabitants of Subcarpathian Rus hope for an economic and cultural recovery, the erosion of national indifference undermined the peaceful coexistence of the different ethnic, linguistic, and religious groups. As Lichtwitz poetically puts it, the Ruthenian

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peasants lived a poor but happy life that was full of melodies, whereas “the houses of the Jews, who inhabit those villages in the tens of thousands, [were] silent.”111 The only Jewish song, according to Lichtwitz, was the famous “Anu olim artsa” (We are going to the Land of Israel), sung by a young school boy in Mukačevo.112 For Lichtwitz, the way out of hardship and misery was not to escape nostalgically to the past, but to participate actively in the Zionist movement with the aim of settling in a country that Jews could really call their home. Perhaps the most moving stories about Jewish life in Subcarpathian Rus were written in Czech by the Bohemian writer Ivan Olbracht (b. Kamil Zeman; 1882–1952). Olbracht’s mother converted from Judaism to Catholicism in order to marry his father, a fact that may well explain Olbracht’s strong interest in Jewish life and his fascination with Orthodox Jewish customs. During the interwar period, Olbracht regularly traveled to Subcarpathian Rus, incorporating what he saw and heard into novels113 and ethnographic reports.114 A collection of three stories entitled Golet v údolí (Valley of exile)115 is set in the fictional village of Polana, which is home to an Orthodox Jewish community and embodies the exoticism Olbracht probably experienced when he first encountered what he saw as the opaque, incomprehensible religious practices of the local Jews. Not only did they speak Yiddish among themselves, but they also maintained traditions that had long vanished from Bohemian and even Moravian Jewish communities. “Událost v mikve” (The incident in the mikveh) explores problems that arise when the ritual bath (mikveh) does not function. The immersion in “living water” to achieve ritual purity is obligatory for women after menstruation and childbirth, and in East European Orthodox communities, for men before Shabbat and holidays. Thus the social order of Polana is thrown off balance when the water level of the mikveh drops below the prescribed minimum. Another example of the Ruthenian Jews strong adherence to tradition, which can, according to Olbracht, turn into fanat icism and even cruelty toward deviators and outsiders, is described in the story “O smutných očích Hany Karadžičové” (The sorrowful eyes of Hana Karadžičová).116 Hana, a Jewish girl from Polana, falls in love with a Jewish atheist she meets in Moravská Ostrava while preparing to immigrate to Palestine. When she decides to marry him, her family and indeed the whole village consider her as good as dead. While Hana and her fiancé are leaving Subcarpathian Rus, first by horse-drawn sleigh and then by car, the Jewish community of Polana mourns her passing. In some respects, the ways Ruthenian Jews were imagined by others during the First Republic serves a function similar to that of the depiction of East European refugees after the outbreak of World War I: Their presence helped to establish a bond

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between the submerged Jewish past of one’s ancestors and the present time, which was characterized by the widespread absence of religious practice.

From Past to Future? Cultural Heritage in the Making The caesura of the nation-state led to a revival of older ways as well as new forms of dealing with the Jewish past that were often characterized by a deep nostalgia. “Almost everywhere the communities offer a sad picture and only tell about the past glory,” wrote Rabbi Richard Feder in a report for the Supreme Council of Jewish Religious Communities in the spring of 1929.117 Feder was one of several rabbis who traveled to smaller communities and former Jewish settlements on behalf of the so-called Heritage Action (Památková akce), which was initiated by the Supreme Council in 1928. With tangible nostalgia, he and his colleagues documented the status of religious life and material culture, wrote reports, completed questionnaires, and collected photos, some of which were published in Die jüdischen Denkmäler in der Tschechoslowakei (Jewish heritage sites in Czechoslova kia) in 1933.118 Adapting a project by the Brno Zionist weekly Jüdische Volksstimme on the eve of World War I, Hugo Gold published three volumes about the past and present of the Jewish communities in Moravia (1929), Bohemia (1934), and Bratislava (1932).119 Gold and his contributors—mainly rabbis and local Jewish and non-Jewish historians— took an approach similar to that of the Supreme Council, and they captured the void of present-day Jewish life compared to the glorious Jewish past. The preservation of Jewish heritage, both spiritual and material, became an urgent task for Jews in the interwar years. Several Bohemian and Moravian Jewish communities were forced to sell abandoned synagogues and other buildings of dissolved communities in the countryside because they could not afford their upkeep. These sites were sometimes sold, for example, to the Czech gymnastics organization Sokol or to the Czechoslovak church, or, sometimes, even to private persons or companies that used them as apartment buildings or warehouses. The Supreme Council appealed to the smaller communities to ask the Heritage Committee to estimate the historic worth of the abandoned synagogues in order to avoid the sale of especially valuable sites.120 The questions of what Jewish heritage and spiritual and material culture were and how to preserve and present them were not new, however: The Jewish museums founded in fin-de-siècle Prague and other European cities also had an identity-forming function. Aside from the Association for the Founding and Maintenance of a Jewish Museum in Prague, which was established in 1906 in the course of the asanace (lit., sanitation) of the former Jewish ghetto, a Jewish community museum in the central Bohemian town of Mladá Boleslav (Jungbunzlau) was

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founded as early as 1905. With the breakdown of the old order in 1917–18, the awareness of the vanishing of traditional Jewish life in the Bohemian Lands, Slovakia (former Upper Hungary), and Subcarpathian Rus’ increased, and two other Jewish museums were founded—one in the eastern Slovak town of Prešov (Eperies, Eperjes) in 1928 and the other, the Jewish Central Museum of Moravia and Silesia, in Mikulov in 1936.121 Although the Jewish Museum in Prague was the most important institution of its kind in Czechoslova kia, its activities were limited by a lack of funds and expertise. Much of its activity was carried out by Salomon Hugo Lieben, a historian and teacher of Jewish religion who organized its acquisitions and first exhibitions. Not until 1926 did the museum open a permanent exhibition in the Ceremonial Hall of the Prague Chevra Kadisha, next to the Old Jewish Cemetery, attracting many visitors. Nevertheless, the museum’s work, particularly the first small cata logue written by Lieben, met with criticism from international experts, who complained of a lack of a contextualization for the exhibited objects.122 The Jewish Central Museum of Moravia and Silesia in Mikulov, whose foundation had been more carefully prepared, took a more progressive approach. Aware of the long-running central European debates about the purpose of Jewish museums, its founders, Richard Teltscher and Alfred Engel, borrowed a broad collection of objects from the Mikulov community (which also provided the museum building), other Moravian Jewish communities, and private individuals. Furthermore, Engel focused on building an archive of written sources.123 While the Central Museum enjoyed the support of state authorities and various local and non-local Jewish organizations, it never reached a broader audience. The number of Jews in Mikulov and elsewhere in Moravia dramatically declined, due to the peripheral position of the town away from the main railroads. The Central Museum therefore organized group trips to Mikulov, including a guided tour of the museum, the former Jewish town, and a visit to neighboring Šafov (Schaffa), which was an example of vanishing rural Jewish life. In the spring of 1938, just two years after its opening, the Central Museum closed down as a consequence of the Anschluss of Austria in March and the mobilization of the Czechoslovak army two months later. Its collections were transferred to the Jewish community of Brno, where the museum association also found a temporary home.124 The increasing scholarly interest in the Jewish past of the Bohemian Lands also became visible in the historiography supported by the Czechoslovak B’nai B’rith order. A prestigious scholarly volume on the history of the Jews of Prague, published to commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the order in 1927, laid the foundations for further activities in the following years. Historians like Samuel Steinherz, Salomon

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Hugo Lieben, and Käthe Spiegel participated in these efforts. In 1928, the Society for the History of Czechoslovak Jews was founded in Prague and began publication of a Jahrbuch focused on medieval, early modern, and economic Jewish history. Its leading figure, Samuel Steinherz, grew up in a Jewish family in the Austrian-Hungarian borderlands and became a professor in the history department of the German University of Prague in 1901. Steinherz was a medievalist and specialist in Austrian history, but his late professional interest in Jewish history was triggered by his experience during the so-called Steinherz affair at the German University of Prague in 1922–23, when nationalist students provoked antisemitic demonstrations against his election as rector. At the end of his academic career, Steinherz devoted his energy to Jewish historiography. “It sounds unbelievable and embarrassing, but it is literally true: The Jewish Community of Prague, one of the oldest and most impor tant Jewish settlements in central Europe, still does not have in the twentieth century a complete history—based on scholarly expertise—of its foundation and development,” he wrote in 1927, and pointed to the blank spaces of the historiography of Jews in the Bohemian Lands. The Jahrbuch der Gesellschaft für Geschichte der Juden in der Čechoslovakischen Republik, edited by Steinherz, as well as the Zeitschrift für die Geschichte der Juden in der Tschechoslowakei, a journal founded by Hugo Gold in Brno in 1930, contributed uniquely to the historiography of Jewish life in central Europe. After a decade of existence, these journals folded because of the destruction of Czechoslovakia and the increasing threats against Jews. Yet the well-known legal historian and co-editor of the Jahrbuch, Guido Kisch, founded another journal, Historia Judaica, whose first issue was yet published in Moravská Ostrava in November 1938. The journal stood in the tradition of Czechoslovak Jewish historiography, but Kisch understood it also as a continuation of the much better-known Zeitschrift für die Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland and the Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums, both of which folded at this time. Under the increasingly difficult circumstances of this period, Kisch tried to preserve the tradition: Historia Judaica “immigrated” via Belgium to the United States in 1938–39, where Kisch continued to publish it until the early 1960s.125 Czechoslovak scholars focused on Jewish history in the early modern era, especially on the economic relations between Jews and non-Jews and on daily Jewish life in the countryside. By contrast, the more recent past, with its dramatic changes in Jewish society, including those resulting from the arrival of East European Jewish refugees during World War I, was often ignored. The focus on a perceived glorious past when the Bohemian Lands, especially Prague, served as a cultural center of European Jews was intended to help contemporary Jews to envision cultural richness and to strengthen their regional ties. Such

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identification remained relevant even in exile, in the work of individual historians like Wilma Iggers, Hugo Gold, Guido Kisch, and many others, and eventually led to the foundation of the Society for the History of Czechoslovak Jews in the 1960s in the United States.

Epilogue In the weeks after the Munich Agreement, in late September 1938, when large parts of the borderlands of Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia were annexed to Nazi Germany with the consent of France and the United Kingdom, the situation of the Jews dramatically changed. Ilse Weber several times described in her letters to her Swedish friend Lilian the fraught situation in the north Moravian borderlands. “Our Heimat [homeland] has been destroyed, Ostrava has no train connection anymore, and the food supply is in danger,” she wrote in October 1938. Weber was afraid of what the new Czechoslovak government had in store for her and other Jews, as it tried to “accommodate itself to Germany.” She mentioned the desperate situation of Jews with Polish citizenship in Moravská Ostrava who were expelled from Czechoslova kia and of Jewish refugees who were stuck in the Niemandsland (no man’s land), between the borders, where they suffered from hunger and unhygienic conditions and sometimes death. Weber was disappointed by most of her German and Czech non-Jewish neighbors who, with the exception of her Czech childhood friend, increasingly avoided contact with Jews. The Webers and their friends debated intensely fleeing the country and mostly how to get their children to safety.126 During the same autumn days, the family of Wilma Iggers was already prepared for emigration. They had left their farm in the west Bohemian borderlands for Prague, where they awaited their departure for Canada. During this time, Iggers and her relatives visited the grave of President Masaryk in Lány (Lana) near Prague.127 It was a symbolic farewell to the First Republic, a “golden age” in the cultural memory of many Jews from the Bohemian Lands. Indeed, Czechoslova kia had been an unexpected but eventually natural homeland for Jews. It had guaranteed the equality of all its citizens as well as minority rights. And in contrast to that of its neighboring countries, Czechoslova kia’s political life was not characterized by significant antisemitism. The reasons for this perception of a peaceful and tolerant democracy are as complex as the individual experiences of Jews during the interwar years. As recent research has shown, the main reasons for the decline of antisemitism as a political force were not religious and ethnic tolerance. Paradoxically, a low level of antisemitism helped the Czech and Slovak political elites in their struggle

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against Germans and Hungarians in Czechoslova kia, the main “enemies of the nation” from their perspective. Antisemitic attitudes and behav ior were a part of the everyday life of Jews in the Bohemian Lands from 1917 to 1920. Though they never completely disappeared, these attitudes were widely perceived by contemporaries as marginal. This changed with the rise of Nazism in Germany, when antisemitic attitudes again became more vocal, especially among the “Sudeten” Germans. Czech discourses on refugees also shifted toward antisemitism, which became increasingly obvious in the autumn of 1938.128 The positive myths of Czechoslova kia as an “island of democracy” and of Jews as the only true Czechoslovaks, which were adopted by non-Jews and Jews during the interwar period and above all during and after World War II, were part of the nation-building process. Though nation-building offered Jews many opportunities for participation, the borders of belonging were permanently redrawn, and the position of Jews remained fragile. Despite the high level of tolerance and integration, the relative stability and peace fostered illusions and ignorance of the subtle tendencies to disintegration, which were also part of democratic Czechoslova kia.

C h apter 6

The Holocaust in Bohemia and Moravia Benjamin Frommer

On the morning of Sunday, August 13, 1939, one hundred and twenty-eight leaders of Jewish communities from around Bohemia and Moravia gathered at the Jewish Town Hall in Prague’s Josefov district. Over the previous year the Jews of the region had suffered a series of debilitating blows that had undone the rights they had gained since emancipation. The head of the Prague Jewish Religious Community, Emil Kafka, welcomed his colleagues somberly: This old town hall, in which we meet today, has experienced much that is good and much that is evil. If you enter its Mayors’ Hall, your eye will be caught by the likeness of the mayor of the Prague Jewish Community, Israel Spiro. Israel Frankl Spiro stood at the head of Prague Jewry when Maria Theresa issued the infamous decree according to which the Jews were expelled from Prague. Back then, in the midst of the harshest winter, 20,000 Prague Jews, with women, children, and negligible possessions, were forced to leave their old home in Prague and moved out to the small settlements of the Bohemian countryside. But in the 1,000 years of Jewish history in Bohemia, there has never been such a grievous time as now.1 Expulsion occupied the minds of the Jewish leaders, who found themselves tasked by the Nazis with achieving the wholesale emigration of their people from the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, the territory that Hitler created from what remained of the provinces after the Munich Pact of September 1938 and the German invasion of March 1939. Six months after Kafka addressed his colleagues from the provinces, the Germans made the Prague leaders responsible

Map 11. Central Europe in 1940.

Map 12. Jewish Population of the Bohemian Lands (the Protectorate and the Sudetenland) in September 1941 (approx. 90,000 according to the Nazi definition). In order to trace key demographic changes in Jewish settlement in the Bohemian Lands, the same twenty-three Jewish communities are shown on the maps throughout this book. The percentage indicates the size of each Jewish community in relation to the total number of Jews in the Bohemian Lands in the period represented. An “x” indicates that no Jewish community existed in that location at the time. For further information on these Jewish communities, see the supplementary essay by Helena Klímová and Lenka Matušíková. The numbers in September 1941 are based on estimates made by leaders of the Jewish Community in Prague on the orders of the Zentralstelle für jüdische Auswanderung. These estimates relate to fifteen regions of the Protectorate, but not to par ticu lar towns. The numbers of Jews in the smaller communities were taken from publications based on regional research. Consequently, a discrepancy arises between the numbers for larger cities (Prague, Kolín, Mladá Boleslav, Pilsen, Tábor, České Budějovice, Brno and Moravská Ostrava) where the Jews of the surrounding area are also included. In all other places, only the Jews from the town are counted. The numbers for the Jewish communities in the Reichsgau Sudetenland are based on the May 1939 “Jew count.” The numbers for September 1941 would therefore be even smaller.

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for all Jews in Bohemia and Moravia. In practice, significant differences remained between the experiences and paths of Jews in the capital and outside it for the next several years, until nearly all of them had to board transport trains to enclosed ghettos. Few returned from that journey in 1945 to find a country in the midst of social and national revolution. The history of the Holocaust in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia can be divided roughly into three periods. From the German occupation in March 1939 until the summer of 1941, the Nazis worked to steal as much as possible from the region’s Jews and force as many of them as possible to emigrate. At the same time, the German occupiers and local Czech authorities implemented a series of escalating antisemitic sanctions that created a “ghetto without walls” that increasingly isolated the region’s Jews from the majority population.2 In September 1941, SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, the chief of the Reich Main Security Office, became the top figure in the Protectorate and immediately instituted policies that aimed to physically remove Jews from Bohemia and Moravia to murder them in walled ghettos, mass shootings, and extermination centers. From the autumn of 1941 until early 1943, the vast majority of the region’s Jews boarded transport trains, never to return home. From 1943 to the end of the war, the story of Bohemian and Moravian Jewry outside ghettos and concentration camps belonged primarily to the intermarried and their children, so-called Mischlinge. Within Theresienstadt, and to a more limited extent in ghettos abroad, and even in the “ family camp” in Auschwitz-Birkenau, the Jews of Bohemia and Moravia continued to function as a coherent community with its own languages, customs, and internal cohesion. Miroslav Kárný, the pioneer historian of the Holocaust in Bohemia and Moravia, noted the difficulty of counting Jews in a land that had experienced such a high degree of secularization, assimilation, and intermarriage.3 In 1938 the Bohemian Lands were home to approximately 118,000 people who defined themselves as Jewish by religion and perhaps another 14,000 people whom the Nazis later deemed to be Jews based on their parentage. Germany’s annexation of the so-called Sudetenland in the fall of 1938 sent nearly 30,000 Jews fleeing to what remained of Czechoslova kia. During the short six-month existence of that rump state, known as the Second Republic, an estimated 14,000 Jews emigrated from the country, a figure that included a disproportionate number of those who had originally fled the Sudetenland. Another 25,000 to 30,000 Jews officially emigrated with Nazi sanction from March 1939 to September 1941.4 To that number we can add smaller numbers of Jews who illegally crossed the Protectorate’s borders into Poland and Slovakia. An unknown number of the

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Jews who fled, legally or not, ended in countries that were later occupied, where they ultimately died at the hands of the Nazis (or, in some cases, the Soviets). By the summer of 1941, the Nazi-authorized central Jewish Religious Community (Jüdische Kultusgemeinde/Židovská náboženská obec) of Bohemia and Moravia counted 88,686 people, including converts to Christianity and others who had not been registered with the community prior to the occupation but who were counted as Jews by so-called racial criteria. By October 1941, when the main wave of mass transports began, the Germans had already deported nearly 1,300 Jewish men from Ostrava to occupied Poland and an unknown number of Jews individually to concentration camps, where many had perished. From 1941 to 1943 the Germans ordered more than 80,000 Protectorate Jews to walled ghettos, the vast majority to the former military town of Terezín (Theresienstadt) in northern Bohemia, which for most was only a way station on the way to death in Bełżec, Treblinka, Auschwitz, and elsewhere. Of the 68,000 Protectorate Jews deported in mass transports beyond the borders of the former Czechoslova kia, only 3,371 are known to have survived the war. Several thousand more, mainly the intermarried and their offspring, who were deported in the last months of the war, remained at Theresienstadt until liberation. By the end of the occupation in 1945, the Jewish community of Bohemia and Moravia had been reduced to less than one-tenth of its prewar size.

From Munich to March The growing strength of the Nazi-aligned Sudeten German Party meant that Jews in the borderlands already experienced rising antisemitism before the Munich Pact. Germany’s annexation of the Sudetenland in the fall of 1938 led to the flight of 200,000 people, predominantly Czechs, but also anti-Nazi Germans and most of the German-speaking Jews of the region. Among those put to flight were the Jews of Mikulov (Nikolsburg) and the museum they had founded. Richard Teltscher fled first to Brno, then in the spring of 1939 avoided Gestapo arrest and journeyed through Poland to Britain. In August 1939 Rabbi Alfred Willmann also escaped to England and ultimately became the spiritual head of the Norwich Hebrew Congregation. Two other key figures in the founding of the Jewish Central Museum for Moravia-Silesia, secondary-school teacher Alfred Engel and cantor Avraham-Adolf Hellmann, stayed with the collection as it moved first to Brno and then to Prague. Both perished in 1944: Engel in Theresienstadt; Hellmann in Auschwitz.5 Those who tried to remain in the lands annexed by Nazi Germany suffered the violence of Kristallnacht, when vandals put forty-seven synagogues and prayer houses in the Sudetenland to flames.6 In its wake, nearly all remaining

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Jews fled, including Max Mannheimer and his family, who finally gave up on life in Nový Jičín (Neutitschein) and moved to the Protectorate city of Uherský Brod, when the Gestapo arrested and then released his father on the condition that he leave the Reich and not return.7 Of the estimated 30,000 Jews who lived in the Sudetenland in 1938, only 2,373 remained by May 1939, most of them in mixed marriages.8 The arrival of the rest into what remained of Czechoslova kia fueled a wave of antisemitism that harkened back to the months after World War I. The government of the Second Republic and the public responded with sympathy and attempts at redress for the non-Jewish Czechs, especially those who had been government officials in the borderlands, coupled with suspicion and exhortation to further emigration for the Jews who had fled Nazism. In the southern Moravian city of Uherský Brod, the Sokol and Orel sports clubs, representing the secular and Catholic wings of Czech nationalism, complained about the “tide of Jewish and other foreign nationality immigrants” who had allegedly worsened the city’s housing crisis, caused a rise in rents, and prevented “Czech citizens” from finding places to live. The clubs collectively called on the government to send the migrants somewhere else.9 Antisemites scattered leaflets throughout the country, including several plastered on a synagogue in Hradec Králové, which simply proclaimed: “Out with the Jews.”10 Although the First Republic was not without intolerance, Jewish survivors testified to their shock at the explosion of antisemitism that followed the Munich Pact in the autumn of 1938.11 Czechs directed their anger at Germanspeakers, including Jewish refugees from the borderlands, who tried their best to disappear in a country that had once been their own. Ruth Bondy explained, “Sometimes they walked through the streets as if they were deaf, not knowing Czech and afraid to speak German: the Czechs must be given no cause to return them across the border.”12 In practice, the purveyors of hate often failed to distinguish in their graffiti and leaflets between native citizens and so-called foreigners from the Sudetenland, and called for the removal of all. Individual Jews faced direct threats to their property, livelihood, and even lives. In February 1939 unknown assailants pasted a flyer that read “Jewish doctor, life-threatening” on Dagmar Fantlová’s father’s medical practice in Kutná Hora.13 The anonymous miscreants who spread antisemitic graffiti and leaflets unnerved Bohemian and Moravian Jews, but the greatest threats to their existence came from more established quarters. Just two weeks after the Munich Pact, on October 14, 1938, the leaders of the associations of Czech lawyers, medical doctors, notaries, and engineers called on the government to respond to alleged public pressure and reduce the number of Jews in their professions to numbers commensurate with the percentage of Jews in the total population. The associations’

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leaders further demanded that the government restrict Jews in the judiciary and state bureaucracy and in the future ban them altogether from the practice of medicine, law, and engineering.14 In late October 1938 the leaders of the nationalist Sokol movement exhorted: “The Jewish question should on national and social grounds be so resolved that those who have emigrated [sic] into the country since 1914 should return to their original homes.”15 Czech leaders heeded the demands of antisemites. In mid-December the prime minister of the Second Czechoslovak Republic, Rudolf Beran, told the parliament that his government would “solve the Jewish question.”16 On January 27 the government ordered the deportation of certain aliens and a thorough review of individuals who had been naturalized in the years since 1918 or had moved from the borderlands after the Munich Pact. On the same day, it initiated the forced removal from the state bureaucracy of all people of “Jewish origin,” defined as anyone with two parents who at any point in time had belonged to the Jewish community or declared him- or herself Jewish on a census.17 The purge included public institutions: In the month before the German invasion, the Baťa Hospital in Zlín dismissed twelve Jewish doctors.18 Heda Kaufmannová later recalled how her boss arrived in her office at the State Health Institute and, sweating profusely, apologetically told her that she would soon lose her job if she did not retire.19 The expansion of Nazi Germany and the rise of antisemitism confronted Jewish families with a series of existential questions that would consume them for the following months and years. In par ticular, Jews faced the agonizing decision of whether to remain under threat in their homeland or risk emigration into the unknown. As in neighboring Germany, many families did not wish to separate and felt responsible for taking care of older relatives. Others feared that they could not reestablish themselves in foreign countries where they did not speak the local language. Many Jews nonetheless began to heed the calls for them to leave Czechoslova kia. In the six months from the Munich Pact to the German occupation of March 1939, about fourteen thousand Jews fled Bohemia and Moravia. For most, however, the doors to foreign destinations remained closed, in part because they had to get in line behind their co-religionists from Germany and Austria, who had faced Nazi persecution earlier. In a final desperate push, parents agreed to send their daughters and sons alone on the so-called Kindertransport (children’s transport). On the eve of the German occupation of the city, twenty Jewish children left Prague on a KLM flight to England. Over the next five months, another 649 Jewish children left by train, part of more than eight thousand Bohemian and Moravian Jews whom the British Committee for Refugees from Czecho-Slova kia and the Czech Refugee Trust Fund helped escape to England before the outbreak of the war.20 While many Jews sought to

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emigrate, others sought a form of internal escape and chose to convert to Christianity in the hope that they could thus avoid persecution.21 In the last weeks of the Second Republic, the pressure on the country’s Jews mounted. Pilsen (Plzeň), in particular, witnessed a string of antisemitic provocations in the late winter months. In February 1939, the city’s Catholic archdeacon, Antonín Havelka, presided over an antisemitic rally and a local builder tried to pry the Star of David off a synagogue. Then, on March 6, 1939, members of Vlajka (Banner), a Czech fascist movement, blew up the mortuary at the city’s Jewish cemetery, an explosion that resulted in the first deaths directly caused by antisemitic violence in post-Munich Bohemia outside of the Sudetenland. The corpses, however, belonged not to Jews but to the attackers, who had been ripped to pieces when the bomb prematurely exploded.22

The Protectorate “15 March 1939—Mom woke up, moved the curtains aside and on the [Jihlava] church steeple hung a red banner with a swastika,” recalled Dov Strauss.23 The Germans had occupied what remained of the Bohemian Lands after the Munich Pact. From Prague, British diplomat William Carr reported to London, “The Jewish population is terrified.”24 In par ticu lar, those who had already fled Germany and Austria feared the worst and, in numerous instances, took their own lives. Native Jews also committed suicide in those first weeks. In Ivančice, Otto Ehrlich took his own life on March 16 in reaction to the attempted takeover of the town by local Czech fascists. Nine days later another local Jew, the son of a factory owner, shot himself after he got into an argument with the family’s German employees.25 In the first days of the occupation, Nazi stormtroopers and local Czech fascist bands targeted Jews’ individual and communal properties. Vandals set fire to synagogues in Brno, Olomouc, and Ostrava. In Vsetín Germans trashed the inside of the synagogue and torched the wooden building. The attackers also broke into an adjoining home, where they viciously beat eighty-year-old Leopold Blau, the community’s nearly blind cantor and religious teacher. When the town’s firemen arrived on the scene, the Germans permitted them to protect neighboring buildings but prevented them from putting out the fire ravaging the synagogue and Blau’s home.26 In České Budějovice local Czech fascists commandeered the Jewish religious community’s building, conducted searches of Jews’ homes, stole their possessions, and marked their shops with labels provided by the Germans.27 The purges that professional organizations and the Czechoslovak government had initiated during the Second Republic intensified upon the German

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occupation. In one fell swoop, at its March 17 meeting, the Beran cabinet ordered the removal of Jews from a range of professions, including law and medicine. The government also banned Jews from leading positions in industrial firms and acknowledged the decision of the agricultural minister not to allow Jews to trade in grain.28 For state institutions the government defined a “Jew” as a person whose natural parents had been Jewish by religion or had declared Jewish nationality at any point in their lives.29 On March 21, 1939, the directors of the Association of Realtors and Mortgage Brokers called for “non-Aryans” to be banned from property sales and the rental business, including the facilitation of loans.30 On the same day the Association of Engineers demanded that all its members fill out a questionnaire about their “origins” within ten days. Under threat of potential disciplinary or criminal penalties, respondents had to state whether they or their parents had ever claimed Jewish religion or nationality, even for a limited time. Perhaps to avoid any unpleasantness, the association simultaneously called on all its Jewish members to voluntarily close down their practices and propose substitutes who could take over.31 In Zlín a Jewish doctor responded to the hopeless situation with desperation: After he learned that he could no longer practice medicine, he killed his two children and then fled to a local hotel, where he jumped to his death from a tenth-floor window.32 Those regulations represented the first step in a multiyear process that deprived Bohemian and Moravian Jews of their jobs, businesses, personal possessions, and homes—in short, that which gave them independent standing and a place in society. For Jews who worked in German schools or organizations, the purge came immediately. On March  28, 1939, German parents wrote to demand that three Jewish teachers be fired from the Realschule in Kyjov. Within a month all three had lost their jobs.33 For others outside the state sector, the purge took effect more gradually, but by June 1, 1939, the Jewish community reported: “The number of people in need of support is growing daily. Jewish employees are being dismissed, the Jewish middle class supporting all the social work and the Jewish communities [are] steadily becoming impoverished, the rich Jews are leaving the country, and the Jews here will very shortly be without any means to satisfy their social needs by themselves. Without substantial help from abroad, our social welfare system will not function in the long term.”34 In July 1939 Jews had to register their stocks, bonds, insurance policies, and any precious metals or jewelry with the National Bank. In March 1940 the Germans then ordered Jews to hand over any such valuables still within their possession. By then Jews’ bank accounts had been frozen and their monthly withdrawals severely limited. Already in the spring of 1939, the Germans had banned the transfer or sale of Jewish-owned property and ordered local governments to

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compile lists of all Jewish-owned businesses, big and small. Lucrative and desirable businesses were assigned Nazi-approved supervisors (Treuhänder) as a first step in the process of “Aryanization,” by which Jewish-owned and operated firms and shops were handed over to the agents and supporters of the occupation. After more valuable properties had been seized, the Germans ordered the liquidation of all remaining Jewish-owned shops in spring 1940. Although in March 1939 the Nazis did not behave nearly as brutally as they had in Austria the previous year, the Gestapo immediately ordered the mass arrest of communists and left-leaning émigrés, many of whom were also Jews. Known to posterity as “Aktion Gitter” (Operation Bars), the roundup disproportionately targeted Bohemian and Moravian Jews, who comprised an estimated 22 percent of the roughly eight thousand people detained over the next several months.35 The Germans eventually released most of those arrested, but for some detainment ended in death. Upon the invasion, the Germans immediately shut the offices of the Palestine Office, the welfare office, and the main Jewish emigration organization (HICEM) in Prague, and arrested several of their key leaders, including Hanna Steiner and Marie Schmolka, who had played critical roles in initiating and organizing the children’s transports.36 In the largest single mass arrest of the spring of 1939, the occupation authorities seized fifty Pilsen Jews along with fifty local “Marxists” (that is, Social Democrats) as hostages in response to an acid attack on German military uniforms.37 The arrests in the spring of 1939 were followed by a second wave in September, after Germany’s invasion of Poland, when the Gestapo arrested individuals with Polish citizenship and seized hostages from among impor tant local figures in the Protectorate. Once again, the arrests disproportionately targeted Jews, who comprised sixty-eight of the approximately three hundred people interned in the Štěpánov camp near Olomouc, which had been used before the war to hold local Germans suspected of collaboration with the Nazis.38 The rabbi of Jihlava, Arnold Gruenfeld, who had previously served as chief rabbi in Cheb, Velké Meziříčí, Brtnice, and Třešť, was among those detained that month and sent to the Dachau concentration camp. Although most of his fellow (nonJewish) prisoners later returned home, the Germans transferred Gruenfeld to Buchenwald and then in July 1941 gassed him at the Pirna-Sonnestein euthanasia facility near Dresden.39 In response to the mass arrests in the spring of 1939, some Jews tried to flee the Protectorate to still-independent Poland. Karel Goliath, a founding member of the Communist Party in Jičín, went underground on March 15, 1939, in response to a police search of his home. He hid until the end of June, when he fled to Poland and then the USSR, where he was later arrested by the Soviet secret police.40 Smuggling networks were established in Silesia, where Jews escaped

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across the border to Poland through coal mines, and later in southeastern Moravia, from where Jews sought to reach Slovakia across the Morava River.41 In the spring of 1939, as some German officials stopped Jews at the borders, others encouraged them to flee albeit only once all their property had been registered and confiscated. In Třebíč in June 1939, the Gestapo had the local police summon all the Jews in town and force them to sign a commitment to emigrate from the Protectorate.42 Despite occasional violence, including apparent bombing attempts on the Old-New Synagogue and Jewish Town Hall in Prague, the spring of 1939 generally remained calm, in part because the German authorities sought to discourage acts of vandalism.43 The occupiers responded to the murder of a German police officer in Kladno in early June with a curfew, the closure of the city’s synagogue, and a demand for local Jews to pay a massive fine, but without any of the wanton violence that had followed Herschel Grynszpan’s murder of a German embassy official in Paris the previous November.44 Nonetheless, by that month the situation of the Protectorate’s Jews had become palpably more precarious. In par ticular, in the Ostrava region “black June” witnessed arson attacks on seven different synagogues within just nine days.45 The very same week Czech fascists marched in force in České Budějovice and threw Jews out of a local café and a hotel.46 Another band carried a black coffin through the streets of Brno and held aloft a sign that read: “Out with the Jews! To Palestine!”47 On June 17, as the fascists repeated their march in Brno, a bomb exploded in a Prague restaurant popular with local Jews, wounding thirty-nine people.48

Expropriation, Segregation, Eviction In the summer of 1939, the German occupiers and Czech authorities in the Protectorate issued three measures that together established the foundations of anti-Jewish persecution for the next two years. First, on June 21, the Reich Protector’s Office issued its Regulation on Jewish Property, which definitively claimed all Jews’ property for Germany. The order thus officially brought to a formal end the efforts of leading Czech authorities to take over businesses owned by Jews. The Regulation on Jewish Property also confirmed that the Nuremberg Laws’ definition of a Jew also applied to the Protectorate.49 Second, in the middle of July the Germans established the Central Office for Jewish Emigration (Zentralstelle für jüdische Auswanderung) in a house confiscated from a Jewish family in the Střešovice neighborhood of Prague. Modeled on a similar institution in Vienna, the SS Central Office claimed power over not only Jews but also their personal and communal property. Funds gained from the rental or sale of so-called Jewish property were designated to the Emigration Fund for

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Bohemia and Moravia (Auswanderungsfond für Böhmen und Mähren), which theoretically aimed to finance the exit of Jews from the provinces.50 From its first days the Central Office pressed the official Jewish Religious Community of Prague to assume responsibility for the migration of all of the Protectorate’s Jews to Prague as a first step toward their emigration from the territory altogether. When immediate relocation of all the Jews to the city proved unrealistic, the Germans tasked the Jewish Community to deliver a quota of hundreds of Jews per week from the provinces to the capital in a process called “mapping,” which, Kaufmannová wryly commented, “had nothing to do with cartography.” Instead, Jews from the provinces and Prague had to report in person to submit financial and tax statements and fill in forms about their assets and familial relations, which the Germans demanded as a prerequisite for legal emigration from the Protectorate. Kaufmannová estimated that she had to sign more than two dozen different papers and described the process as a “conveyor belt” (in words that echoed Adolf Eichmann’s, albeit from a very different perspective).51 The third measure laid the foundation of the “ghetto without walls.” At the beginning of August 1939, the Protectorate Interior Ministry issued a directive that encouraged local authorities to introduce measures to separate Jews from non-Jews in public spaces. Officials in Prague believed that a central directive would bring harmony to a range of bans that had been introduced haphazardly in various towns over the previous month. The authorities also envisaged the order as a response to several recent, violent attacks on Jews and Jewish property by SA men and Czech fascists, including a bombing attack on the mortuary in the Kroměříž Jewish cemetery (that once again killed a perpetrator) and a raid on sunbathers on Prague’s Slavic Island (Slovanský ostrov). The decree was notable for its pseudo-legal attempt to seek precedent in the Czech law on public order, which led to a specific set of sanctions for violators (a fine of up to 5,000 crowns or detention of up to fourteen days) which were to be applied by the Protectorate police and gendarmes (in other words, by Czech officials). To maintain the pretense of autonomy, the Interior Ministry originally only suggested sanctions to local authorities, including the banning of Jews from public swimming areas and from specific eating and drinking establishments.52 Local authorities thus initially determined the extent of the bans, which meant that, in the autumn of 1939, Jews faced a bewildering set of restrictions in some areas, different ones in others, and, in a few, none at all.53 Over the subsequent months both German and Czech central authorities repeatedly badgered district officials to issue restrictions and by the winter of 1939–40 had imposed a degree of uniformity. The August order did not bring an end to violence against Jews or to demands for restrictions on them. Within two weeks of its publication, a mob of

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eight hundred Czech fascists, German soldiers, SS officers, and SA men rampaged through the city of Brno and beat local Jews. The attackers wounded fourteen of them and claimed the life of attorney Paul Drexler.54 Contrary to the segregation decree’s alleged intent, its promulgation only encouraged local antisemites, sometimes prompted by Gestapo agents or Nazi party members, to make further demands. For example, despite a range of restrictions already issued by the district office in Kolín, Czech fascists there threatened in January  1940 to stage an antisemitic demonstration at the city theater during intermission and throw Jews out of the building. In response, the district commissioner (hejtman) banned Jews from the theater “to prevent the threat to public peace and order, as well as other further complications.”55 There, as elsewhere, the pressure of antisemites led not to their punishment or marginalization but to the fulfillment of their demands in the vain hope that they would then cease to trouble the authorities. At the same time fascist and antisemitic tabloids, with the encouragement of the occupiers, featured hundreds upon hundreds of denunciation letters that called out Jews and “Jew-lovers” who violated the increasing number of restrictions on contacts between members of the two groups. In the early months of the occupation, the eponymous newspaper of the Vlajka fascist movement led the way, but after May 1940 a new tabloid, Arijský boj (Aryan Struggle), became the most odious purveyor of antisemitism in print. The weekly regularly featured dozens of denunciatory letters from around the Protectorate, which targeted individuals who had violated the antisemitic restrictions. With the outbreak of the war in September 1939, the Nazis intensified the persecution of Protectorate Jews. On September 11, the Prague Jewish Community informed its members that the Central Office for Jewish Emigration had ordered a special curfew only for Jews from 8 PM to 6 AM. Less than two weeks later, the Central Office ordered the Community to compile a registry of all those designated as Jews. Then, on Rosh Hashanah, the Germans ordered Jews to turn in their radios to the authorities. Over time, central and local authorities repeatedly expanded the initial list of locations from which Jews should be banned. Jews were further precluded from using libraries, spas and bathhouses, summer resorts, and, eventually, all types of gardens, parks, and forests. On the orders of the Nazis in July 1940, the Interior Ministry then restricted Jews to shopping during limited hours of the day. Initially, local authorities could determine those hours, but subsequent orders established a uniform policy that Jews could shop only from 3 PM to 5 PM. The restriction aimed to allow so-called Aryans to have the first pick of fresher produce and other goods. Soon thereafter social establishments (pubs, restaurants, hotels), which had previously been permitted to identify special rooms within their establishments for Jews, were

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ordered to choose whether to be open only for “Aryans” or Jews. In Prague, Jews who had to come to the capital to appear at the Central Office and Jewish Community could only stay at two officially Jewish hotels. Further restrictions ended the Jews’ freedom of movement. The authorities banned Jews from using the ferries in Prague and public transportation in cities throughout the Protectorate. On Prague trams, after September 1940, Jews had to obey regulations originally created to govern passengers who brought suitcases, prams, or dogs with them. For Jews, however, the rules were even more restrictive: They could only board the back end of the second car of any trolley and could no longer ride one-car trams at all.56 Outside Prague, where one-car trolleys were more common, Jews in some cities faced complete bans on public transportation. In January 1941 the restrictions were tightened such that Jews were only permitted to use trams to get to and from work and were banned altogether on weekends. In May 1942 the authorities declared that even Jews on their way to work had to disembark if the trams became full. Various towns banned Jews from specific streets and squares on certain days or, increasingly, altogether.57 Most critically, the German authorities moved to fix Jews in place and prevent their movement. First, in October 1940, the Reich Protector’s Office declared that Jews could no longer change residences without the permission of the authorities, a regulation that was interpreted to apply to moves beyond districts. The following June the Central Office then extended the ban to all changes of residence.58 Then, in September 1941, the Germans instituted a total prohibition on unapproved Jewish travel beyond the borders of the local community, no matter how small.59 Although the Jews of Bohemia and Moravia all lived in the “ghetto without walls,” they experienced persecution to a different degree according to where they resided. City Jews, above all, those in Prague and especially the young, recall their sense of loss when they could no longer visit the cinema or theater. For village Jews, trips to the theater or cinema were likely not part of their usual routine, but the ban on entrance to the one local pub, if enforced, could be lifealtering.60 For Prague Jews, limitations and then bans on public transportation caused great difficulties, particularly for those who lived in far-flung districts and had to travel to work or to the offices of the Jewish Community in the old town.61 But the limitations that precluded a Jew from leaving his or her home district did not necessarily impinge on daily life in big cities. For small town and village Jews, however, the ban severely disrupted and greatly impoverished their lives. In the Kutná Hora district, a divorced father had to petition for permission to see his children, who lived with his ex-wife in another town.62 The Jews of Poděbrady could not visit their relatives’ graves in the local cemetery that lay outside the town limits. When a local Jew died, the only people who

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could be present at the funeral were the three community officials authorized to lower the corpse into the grave.63 In the first two years of the occupation, Jews not only lost their jobs and faced social isolation; many, if not most of them, also had to move out of their homes and even away from their hometowns. Richard Feder, one of the very few Czech rabbis to have survived deportation, later commented that by the time they had received their orders to board transport trains, “Only a few Jews remained in their original homes.”64 Many Jews relocated several times in the few years between the occupation of March 1939 and the moment when the Germans sent them to Theresienstadt or other ghettos in Eastern Europe. Věra Kreinerová’s family fled German-annexed Opava to nearby Ostrava after the Munich Pact, but the pillaging of Jewish synagogues there drove them onward to Prague, where they lived first in the district of Holešovice. In time, the Germans ordered their removal, and the Kreiners relocated to the edge of the erstwhile ghetto of Josefov, where five Jewish families crammed into one apartment.65 Jaroslav Taussig, for his part, moved five times in a mere three years, but tried to resist the sixth: first, from his home town of Holice to Prague in March 1939, and then four times within the city itself, until he went underground after receiving orders to board a transport train to Theresienstadt.66 In some cases Jews moved because Nazi officials claimed their homes. In the first months of the occupation, the Germans seized a number of residential properties owned by individual Jews to house party and state officials as well as governmental offices. For example, the Wehrmacht commandeered the magnificent Petschek villa and its garden in the Bubeneč neighborhood of Prague (which since the war has served as the residence of the US ambassador).67 Other Jews moved to Prague as a first step toward emigration, because only at foreign consulates in the capital could they secure the visas necessary to leave the Protectorate and enter another country. Some Jews sought shelter in the anonymity of bigger cities and the community of their larger Jewish populations, especially once they had lost their jobs or businesses in their hometowns. From the onset of the occupation, however, Jews also traveled in the opposite direction—from big cities to the countryside, where the enforcement of antisemitic regulations could be less severe and where it was easier to procure goods on the black market from local farmers. One Jew who moved from České Budějovice to the countryside later commented, “If I recall the life of Jews in the city here—where no one was sure for how long he’d have a roof over his head and whether by the evening he’d be in an attic room of other similarly persecuted people, packed together—we survived those three years [in the village] in relative peace.”68 The Nazis later justified restrictions on Jews’ movement because of “hamster traveling” (Hamsterfahrt), a pejorative term used to describe

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“foraging” trips to the countryside to buy provisions on the black market.69 Overall, however, Prague’s Jewish community grew over the course of the first years of the occupation in relation to the rest of the Protectorate, even when one takes into account what was likely a larger emigration of the capital’s Jews from the territory altogether. In addition to the individual evictions of Jews from their homes, Nazi officials, in particular regional governors (Oberlandräte), repeatedly acted to remove Jews from entire neighborhoods and sometimes whole towns. Already in the late summer of 1939, various German officials had ordered the Jews of far-flung regions to prepare for immediate relocation to Prague, but the Wehrmacht invasion of Poland put those plans on hold. Nonetheless, the desire of some Oberlandräte to make parts of their regions “Jew-free” persisted. The first, and for some time the worst, such case occurred in the city of Mladá Boleslav, where, in response to an order from the Oberlandrat in nearby Jičín, local authorities forced more than 250 Jews into the city’s castle. Norbert (Fried) Frýd, who was authorized to travel around the Protectorate to collect social welfare funds for the Jewish Community, later recalled his visit to the city: “We discovered the pits of Protectorate housing [in Mladá Boleslav] . . . , where they simply chased out all the Jews, . . . men, women and children, from their original dwellings and assigned them the barren halls of a castle above the city. In three days the wretches had to settle into spaces where all the windows were smashed, the floors torn up, mounds of rubble in the corners, no heating stoves, no electricity, not even water or flush toilets.”70 When Frýd returned to the city the next year, however, he saw the visible results of the efforts of the beleaguered Jews. Despite all the obstacles, the castle now had glass windows, painted walls, fixed floors, and running water for toilets and even showers.71 Other Oberlandräte saw the eviction of Jews in one district as permission to carry out similar actions in their own jurisdictions. After the Oberlandrat of Jihlava had ordered all the Jews in his city to relocate, many of them crowded into the far smaller nearby town of Třešť, whose Jewish population skyrocketed from sixty to one hundred almost overnight.72 The Zlín Oberlandrat went even further and commanded most of the Jews in his region to be concentrated in the city of Uherský Brod, and then within it to the streets of the erstwhile ghetto. In the central Moravian town of Boskovice, first the local Jews had to move into the old ghetto, and then the Jews from the entire district joined them there.73 Whereas the Oberlandräte and the Gestapo generally initiated evictions and resettlement outside Prague, in the capital the Central Office for Jewish Emigration organized a drawn-out process to identify the thousands of apartments and houses owned and inhabited by Jews and to redistribute the properties to officials and supporters of the occupation regime. First, the Central Office

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ordered the Jewish Religious Community to carry out a complete survey of all homes inhabited and owned by Jews in the city, and then, within a few days, followed this with a declaration that Jews in Prague could no longer rent empty apartments.74 Earlier, the Gestapo had already ordered the city police to remove Jews from major squares and thoroughfares in the city. The wholescale resettlement of Jews started in earnest in the capital only in the fall of 1940, when the Central Office initiated the eviction of Jews from the periphery of Prague and their resettlement in central districts, primarily in the former (and now again) ghetto of Josefov and the Old Town, then secondarily in the New Town and the Vinohrady neighborhood. The resettlement operation aimed to concentrate Jews in the homes of other Jews, in par ticular in older apartments without central heating.75 In practice the Central Office issued the eviction orders, and the Prague Jewish Community had the unenviable task of finding places for the newly homeless Jews to live. For those Jews who were forced to leave their neighborhoods and hometowns, the process of relocation severed their ties to familiar neighbors who might have other wise alleviated the suffering caused by the range of antisemitic restrictions on social interaction and basic provisions. The Jews, who had been denaturalized, also then ceased to be residents of a specific place. World War II also irrevocably damaged the material legacy of Bohemian and Moravian Jewry. Even before the German occupation, Jewish communal property had attracted the attention of vandals and local authorities, albeit for different reasons: The former complained about the presence of Jewish symbols in the center of towns; the latter saw an opportunity to expropriate that property for public use or to build housing. In some cases, city councils had sought to purchase synagogues, prayer houses, and schools before March 1939, but the arrival of Nazi rule reinforced their efforts. In September 1939, for example, the press reported that Liteň, across the river from Karlstein Castle, had acquired the local synagogue for use as a town hall and local museum.76 The following year the Nazis complained that towns throughout the Protectorate had acquired Jewish community property “in most cases for an extraordinarily low price, or totally without compensation.” Subsequent investigations revealed a number of local authorities who were in “negotiations” to acquire synagogues, Jewish town halls, and cemetery land to use as schools or to widen roads, among other aims. The Central Office declared that only it could dispose of Jewish communal property, which, to many towns’ unhappy surprise, could be acquired only through payment to the Emigration Fund.77 The prices dissuaded some town councils, but other pressed ahead and bought synagogues and cemeteries in the periods both before and after the deportation of Jews from their regions. In Kroměříž, the city government paid not only for the land on which

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the burned-down synagogue had stood but also for the demolition and removal of its ruins.78 The acquisition and redistribution of Jewish communal property included even the selling off of gravestones as building material—a common enough practice that there was a special form for it. On the orders of the German-appointed mayor, the city of Jemnice paved streets with gravestones from the local Jewish cemetery.79 Amid evictions and increasing restrictions, Jews reacted to persecution in a myriad of ways. Some responded by drawing closer to fellow Jews who faced a similar predicament. Ruth Bondy commented, “As Jews became more and more cut off, their relationship to the community perforce grew stronger.”80 For others, however, a “return” to the fold was undesirable or even unimaginable. By the definition of the Nuremberg Laws, so-called racial Jews included even elderly individuals whose parents had converted to Catholicism in the middle of the nineteenth century and who had been baptized soon after birth decades before. One such man, who had married another converted Jew, explained his predicament: “Through the declaration [that I am] a Jew, I have been torn from the environment in which I had lived for many, many years and thrown into a society with which I had never cultivated ties and which is simply foreign to me.”81 The ban on social interaction and visiting places of leisure fell especially hard on Jewish children, who had spent most of their lives in an open and integrated society. In testimony decades later they recalled their shock at antisemitism and segregation. For adults the loss of earnings and the threat of physical danger loomed largest, but for the young bans on entrance to swimming pools, skating rinks, and movie theaters represented an assault on childhood. At first some Jews found places to swim which were farther from their hometowns, but local fascists repeatedly pressured authorities to close those to “non-Aryans.” The measures even struck the youngest when the Prague police ordered all but three of the city’s playgrounds closed to Jews.82 In time the authorities banned “non-Aryans” from all gardens, parks, forests, and playgrounds. In their place, Jewish children and their parents in Prague sought respite and exercise among the dead. Bondy commented that in the cemeteries in Josefov and Žižkov, “children played hide-and-seek among tombstones, mothers wheeled baby carriages along the walks, old people sat on graves and reminisced, and young couples sought out secluded corners to be alone.”83 Nor were Jewish children allowed to remain in schools. In March 1939 the occupation authorities immediately expelled Jewish pupils from Germanlanguage primary and secondary schools and universities. During the following academic year, Jewish children continued to attend Czech-language public schools, with the exception of university students who, together with non-Jews,

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Figure 21. A woman with two children in the Old Jewish Cemetery in Prague, 1942. © Jewish Museum in Prague.

lost the opportunity to study when the occupiers shut down all Czech higher education after the student demonstrations of November 1939. Then, on August 7, 1940, with the authority of the Reich Protector’s Office, the Czech minister of education expelled Jewish pupils from “Czech schools of any type” as of the new academic year. Later that month, in some cases only shortly before the first day of school, parents received individual notices or were informed directly by school directors of the ban. Věra Kohnová noted in her diary, “I can’t believe it. We will not have school anymore. . . . Perhaps, when things get more peaceful again, we will have school again; maybe never at all.”84 In theory, the Jewish Community could still establish a network of its own schools, but it hardly had the means to support the few such facilities that already existed. In Prague and Ostrava the community offered preschool and

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elementary education for a small minority of the Jewish children. Brno also had a Jewish secondary school, the only one of its kind in the Protectorate. Of the 4,055 Jewish children registered in Bohemia for the 1940–41 academic year, a mere 888 were actually enrolled in a Jewish school, all of them in Prague. Even in the capital, 2,002 Jewish pupils of elementary-school age had no option except home schooling. In Moravia only 340 Jewish children were in school, while 1,089 remained at home.85 The community had nothing to offer Jews in the countryside except the suggestion that they could band together and hire a Wanderlehrer (itinerant teacher) for their children. Jewish families tried to fill the gap with private tutors. Alena B.’s father attempted to instruct her and her brother in German, but the tensions that caused within the family led them to hire a twenty-four-year-old Jewish man who had been fired from his teaching job. She recalled: “So he came [to our town] and each family, whose child he taught, gave him lunch that day. . . . [The teaching] happened in such a way that, below us—there was a closed Jewish store there—and no one was there, it was abandoned. . . . And in the back was the office of the owner and there we learned in that former office.”86 At first, regular Czech (“Aryan”) teachers could instruct their former Jewish pupils on the side, but on December 6, 1940, the Reich Protector’s Office ordered the education ministry to prevent all public-school teachers from privately tutoring any Jews. On December 18 the education ministry then banned all private tutoring of Jews, children and adults.87 Thereafter, Jewish children who could not make it into the few official Jewish schools (in Prague, Brno, and Ostrava) could theoretically educate themselves and then take exams as “external” students.88 At the end of April 1941, on the orders of the Protector, the education ministry declared that the Jewish secondary school in Brno would be shut down at the end of that school year. Finally, in July 1942, amid mass transports to walled ghettos, the authorities prohibited all education of Jews in the Protectorate.89 Beyond schooling, Jewish leaders struggled with an unprecedented situation that only worsened with time. In its early years the Jewish Religious Community fulfilled three main functions. Officially, the Germans tasked it with a primary mission of facilitating the emigration of Jews from the Protectorate and the liquidation of Jewish community property. Second, the Germans expected the Community to convey official orders to Jews and to help ensure that individuals obeyed. Third, almost by default, it found itself responsible for the social welfare of impoverished Jews who increasingly were left without steady income or access to their assets. By early December 1939 the Jewish Community of Prague extended financial support to approximately 5,000 poor Jews and provided 1,500 lunches a day in its communal kitchen in Josefov. In addition to

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Figure 22. Students of the Jewish school on Jáchymova ulice in Prague, 1941. © United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC.

those traditional, if greatly expanded, functions, it also had to provide medical care once authorities kicked Jews out of hospitals and banned them from visiting so-called Aryan doctors. As the Community worked to establish a Jewish hospital and tubercular sanatorium in Prague, it set up “small hospitals” in private apartments around the city.90 To coordinate efforts to find shelter for Jews who had moved from the provinces, the Community also established a housing department, whose remit grew exponentially over the following year as more and more landlords in Prague evicted their Jewish tenants.91 By the spring of 1940, the Jewish Religious Community had created 32 departments and hired nearly 2,600 employees to meet the demands of the Nazis and the needs of the city’s Jews.92 The Community’s official bilingual newspaper, Jüdisches Nachrichtenblatt/ Židovské listy (The Jewish Bulletin), which became the only periodical that Jews could legally buy and read, fulfilled all three of the Jewish Religious Community’s functions. On its pages Jews could read encouraging stories of their brethren who had successfully emigrated and learn what steps were necessary to join them abroad. The newspaper featured regular notices about the most recent antiJewish regulations and exhortations not to violate them lest they endanger the entire community. The periodical also included calls for Jews to contribute to

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campaigns to support the social welfare of others. On its last pages one could also find classified advertisements, which often revealed far more about the plight of the Protectorate’s Jews than did the newspaper’s main articles. Jews offered to tutor other Jews in foreign languages—both as a source of income for unemployed teachers and as possible training for those who hoped to move abroad. Others sought marriage partners who had access to foreign visas. In between, a few businesses still offered their ser vices and goods to the increasingly impoverished Jews. In response to the dire employment situation of Jews, the Community sought to negotiate their use as manual laborers. Although many employers were reluctant at first, by the spring of 1940, Protectorate labor offices hired out more and more Jews for road and railway construction, river channeling, brickworks, forestry, and the harvesting of beets, poppies, and other foodstuffs.93 In the hope that manual skills could pay the way for emigration, the Jewish Community in July 1940 announced the transformation of a farm near the town of Deutschbrod (Německý Brod; today, Havlíčkův Brod) into a special camp for young Jews to be trained in manual labor. The call for participants emphasized the opportunities and good living conditions at the Linden (Lípa) facility, but noted that volunteers would not be able to leave during their three-month term and that the camp was under the watch of the Central Office.94 In a significant step toward forced labor, in February 1940 the Central Office for Jewish Emigration banned the emigration of all working-age Jews from the Protectorate.95 In January 1941 the Protector’s Office then fully outlawed the employment of Jews in any independent occupation, including work as waiters.96 In the spring the Protectorate Government ordered that all Jewish males aged eighteen to fifty had to do forced labor.97 Over the subsequent months and years, Jews toiled throughout the Protectorate building roads, felling trees, and doing farm work. The German occupiers, local governments, and private businesses all utilized Jewish workers to their advantage. In Příbram, for example, the district commissioner ordered in November 1941 that fifteen Jews, preferably girls older than fifteen, be used to harvest potatoes that remained uncollected on a local farm.98 In November 1942 the labor office in Holešov ordered the Jewish community to assemble forty Jews for demolition work at the city’s German police barracks.99 Beginning in January 1941 Jewish men throughout the Protectorate had to rise early to clear snow from city streets.100 In September 1941 municipal authorities created work details of local Jews who could be summoned on a moment’s notice to erase anti-German graffiti. In 1944 intermarried Jews who remained in Prague had to break up ice on the Vltava river.101 In addition to the Linden camp, which soon shed the pretense of vocational training, Jews also labored on the Heydrich estate in Panenské Břežany (confiscated from

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Figure 23. Jews being forced to cut ice on the Vltava, Prague, c. 1944. © Photograph by Ivan Vojtěch Frič, Courtesy of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC.

Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer) and toiled in the coal mines in Oslavany near Ivančice until they were deported to Theresienstadt.

Transports from Prague and Beyond Before the German occupiers could make the Protectorate Judenrein [“cleansed of Jews”], they had to locate and identify the Jews of Bohemia and Moravia. By the autumn of 1939, Jewish communities and local authorities throughout the territory had provided the Nazis with lists of Jews in their districts, together with details about their addresses, family relations, and property. The process of “mapping” provided the occupiers with even more detailed information on individuals and their relatives. In February 1940 Jews learned that they had to appear at their local police stations to have the letter “J” (for Jude [Jew]) stamped in their identity papers. Anyone who failed to appear faced arrest. Thanks to the high degree of intermarriage and secularization in Bohemia and Moravia,

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numerous people who were not members of the Jewish community or did not even consider themselves Jewish found themselves subject to antisemitic regulations. The Nazis ordered all such “B-Jews” to register with the Jewish Religious Community, which established a special department to handle relations with them. At the end of March 1941, the Jewish Community counted 12,680 B-Jews in the Protectorate, more than half of whom belonged to one of the Christian confessions (first among them, 4,818 Catholics).102 In the autumn of 1941, German antisemitic policies took a radical turn in the Protectorate in conjunction with developments in Germany. First, on September 1, 1941, the Reich Interior Ministry declared that in public all Jews would have to wear a yellow Star of David with the German word Jude on their chests. Since 1939 local antisemites had pushed for the marking of Jews to dissuade nonJews from fraternizing with them.103 Police in the Protectorate had repeatedly noted that they could not effectively enforce the antisemitic regulations because the region’s Jews did not differ visibly from the rest of the population.104 As of the very day, September 19, that star-wearing became obligatory under penalty of deportation to a concentration camp, the occupiers also decreed that Jews could no longer travel beyond the borders of their hometowns without permission from the authorities. On October 1 the Germans celebrated the end of the holiest period in the Jewish calendar, the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur), with an order to close all synagogues permanently. On the same day that the SS Central Office ordered the Jewish Community to begin the registration of all Jews in the Protectorate, radio stations began airing a viciously antisemitic series of lectures in Czech, “What Do You Know about the Jews?”105 Jewish leaders from around the Protectorate received summons to come to Prague within twenty-four hours to pick up stars for their communities and instructions for how the markings were to be worn.106 As in Germany, Jews in the Protectorate reacted to the order with a range of emotions and actions. Some sought to wear the star with pride, but most saw it as a badge of shame. Richard Glazar noted that the elderly seemed not to mind, but Toman Brod, just twelve years old at the time, recalled how he cried when he had to affix the star to his clothing.107 Others testified later to the many methods they used to hide the stars in public—for example, by covering them with pocketbooks or scarves—or to make them easily removable. Alena Ludvíková described how Jewish women would wear yellow-patterned clothing and repeatedly wash the stars to make them less visible.108 Heda Kaufmannová and her brother Viktor developed a system by which their stars appeared to be sewn onto their garments but could instead be removed and reattached quickly.109 The stars made Jews immediately identifiable and targets of vigilantes. Věra Segerová recorded one such incident in her diary entry for August 7, 1942:

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Beyond Senovážné náměstí [just off of Wenceslas Square] an elderly Jew stepped onto the tram. Conductor no. 2869 . . . jumped right at him and screamed, roughly shaking him, “What makes you think you don’t have to board last? Didn’t you see that there’s an Aryan behind you?” The Jew meekly nodded. Regardless, the conductor just as roughly threw him off at the next stop. Some man, an Aryan, for whom every thing wasn’t clear, asked, “Why’d you throw that Yid [Židák] off?” Then the conductor started in a vulgar way to explain every thing. All around, the sitting passengers contentedly nodded and several even added coarse comments.110 Hiding or not wearing a star was one the most vigorously enforced offenses, punishable with imprisonment or immediate deportation to a concentration camp. Jewish survivors testify that acquaintances and friends began to avoid contact with them when they were marked with a yellow star. Jozefa Hřebejková from Milevsko recalled that the star did not mean much at the beginning for local Jews, except that some kids ridiculed them. But then a Czech official and his wife were arrested for being “Jew-lovers” and sent to the concentration camp in the Theresienstadt Small Fortress. After that non-Jews avoided contact with the Jews in town.111 The onslaught of regulations in September and early October 1941 was just a prelude to far more deadly measures. On German instructions, the Czechlanguage press in the autumn of 1941 repeatedly called for the complete ghettoization and total removal of Jews from the Protectorate. The first deportation of Jews from Bohemia and Moravia had occurred already in October 1939, when the Germans sent nearly 1,300 Jewish men from Ostrava (along with 1,500 from Vienna) across the border into the Nisko region of occupied Poland. There, the several transports of Jews were left to fend for themselves among a hostile population through the winter months. In the spring of 1940, the Nazis allowed those who survived, and had not escaped farther to the east, to return to their families, who then learned firsthand of the horrifically brutal policies of the Germans in occupied Poland. The so-called Nisko Operation was originally intended to be the first step in the wholesale removal of Jews from central Eu rope, but the Germans quickly abandoned that plan, and returned temporarily to forced migration as the main “solution to the Jewish question,” for the Reich and the Protectorate at least.112 Almost exactly two years after the Nisko transports, in October 1941, the newly appointed acting Reich Protector, Reinhard Heydrich, ordered Jews in Prague to assemble for transport. Over the next several weeks, five trains of one thousand Jews each left Prague for the walled-in ghetto in the city of Lodz. Even the worst moments of life in the Protectorate had left them unprepared for the

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“unimaginable conditions” they faced on arrival in occupied Poland.113 Dawid Sierakowiak, a young Polish Jew in the Lodz ghetto, commented in his diary: “A transport of Czech deportees was brought in unexpectedly. They . . . had wonderful luggage and cartloads of bread. I’ve heard that they have been inquiring whether it’s possible to get a two-room apartment with running water. Interesting types. . . . These ‘western Europeans’ will soon learn the way that some people live in the German Reich.”114 All but a few hundred of the Bohemian and Moravian Jews sent to Lodz perished in the nearby Chelmno killing center or in Auschwitz-Birkenau. At the end of November 1941, the Germans also sent a transport of one thousand Jews from Brno to Minsk. Only twelve of them survived the war.115 Neither Lodz nor Minsk, however, was the destination planned for most Protectorate Jews. In October  1941 the Central Office tasked the Prague Jewish Community with preparing plans to resettle all remaining Bohemian and Moravian Jews to locations within the Protectorate itself. With a foreboding of the horrors of life in occupied Poland, which Jakob Edelstein, the head of the Emigration Department of the Jewish Community and the former director of the Palestine Office, had himself witnessed during the Nisko Operation, the Community established a special “G” (ghetto) committee, which scouted out various sites and detailed their suitability.116 The Germans ultimately selected a single location out of a list of nearly a dozen: the walled, military garrison town of Theresienstadt (Terezín), located about an hour north of Prague, on the border with the annexed Sudetenland. The Central Office ordered the Community to register Prague’s Jewish population in October 1941. From that month onward, Jewish community officials repeatedly fanned out across the city and delivered summons to individuals and families to appear at a set date and time at the trade fair grounds in the neighborhood of Holešovice to assemble for transport. For more than two years, community officials had delivered notices about restrictions, evictions, and confiscations, but now they brought even more horrific news with them when they arrived at the doors of Jews’ homes. In his memoirs, future film star Miloš Kopecký recalled a darkly humorous vignette that captured the contemporary association of community officials with ill tidings: “A Jewish family is sitting around the dinner table when suddenly the doorbell rings. The wife goes to open it. Behind the door, two men in leather coats. ‘Gestapo,’ they say. The wife heaves a sigh of relief: ‘Gott sei Dank! [Thank God!] We feared it was someone from the Jewish Community.’ ”117 By the time individual Jewish families in Prague received notice that they had been summoned for transport, they often had only one or, at most, several nights to prepare for their departure. Some, like Heda Kaufmannová, tried at the last moment to go underground,

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but most focused their energies on packing essential goods for the trip to Theresienstadt. Survivors recalled anguished decisions over what could fit into their suitcases, which had been limited to fifty kilograms each (which the Germans ultimately stole). Decades later Zdeněk Pošusta recalled the scales with which his grandmother and aunt had weighed their possessions to make sure they did not exceed the allowed limits.118 Others remembered that they had worn several layers of clothing and their leather ski boots to extend the limits of the permissible. Some sewed valuables into the linings of their clothing. In the final hours, workers from the Jewish Community arrived to help the condemned pack and carry their suitcases to the collection point. These mainly young men also cleaned up the homes of Jews after they had departed. There they found evidence of hasty departures and, in some cases, efforts to hide or damage what had been left behind. They carted off the furniture and other possessions to designated warehouses, some in now-closed synagogues. Richard S. recalled his cleanup work in a crew of Jewish men: “Once a family left, they [the Gestapo] sealed the apartment, then we came, and the furniture was collected on Dlouhá Street. . . . I remember there were beautiful baroque armoires there from old Jewish families, and I locked all those armoires and threw away all the keys. Seeing as they [the Nazis] had already stolen them, they should at least have to damage them a bit to open them.”119 In Prague and the surrounding areas, Jews took their first steps to Theresienstadt alone or with their immediate family. From the small villages outside the capital, they boarded early morning trains or buses before the sun rose and then switched in Prague to trolley cars that took them to Holešovice. On the way they were joined by local Jews whose transport orders allowed them the use of public transportation for that one, final trip. In Holešovice Jews reported to a camp next to the Trade Fair Palace. Most Jews then spent several days in wooden barracks, where they slept on the floor huddled with loved ones. While there they had once again to declare all their remaining possessions to the SS. Rabbi Feder reported that the SS beat some people so badly there that they later died in the hospital in Prague.120 Then, before the break of dawn, Jews marched, under the watch of the police, the short distance from the fair grounds to the Bubny railway station, where they boarded specially commandeered passenger trains that took them to Theresienstadt. Beginning with the first trains to Lodz, the Germans spread out the deportation of Prague’s Jews—who numbered 46,801 at the end of September 1941—over a period of more than two years. From October  1941 through March  1943, nearly three dozen transports of about 1,000 Jews each left the capital. Outside Prague and Brno (the Protectorate’s second largest city), the Germans deported almost the entire Jewish population of each region in just a few

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days. Representatives of the Central Office first arrived in a central regional town, to which the Jews of the surrounding areas had been summoned for registration. If anyone failed to appear, the local gendarmerie was tasked with tracking the person down.121 Between registration and deportation several weeks or even months might elapse, leaving more time than in Prague to entrust possessions to neighbors or perhaps to go underground. On the appointed date, Jews from surrounding areas first had to travel to the region’s assigned collection point. Jews journeyed by train, bus, horse-drawn carriage, or on foot from villages and small towns, where their neighbors came out to wave goodbye or simply gawk. In some instances, Jews had to leave in the dark: thirty-eight Jews from Brtnice left in the middle of the night on horse carts in the direction of nearby Třebíč.122 Once Jews arrived at the designated Sammellager (collection camp)—often a school (for some children, the very school from which they had been expelled in fall 1940)—they and local Jews underwent an experience much like that at the trade fair grounds. Survivors testify that the first time they saw an SS officer was at the collection point, where they were shocked at the brutality. For non-Jews the experience of witnessing deportation also depended on where one lived. In Prague the original transports came as a shock and for some an ominous sign of what might befall the Czech majority in time.123 Over the subsequent months and years, however, Jews marching off to Holešovice became a regular occurrence. Moreover, the sheer size of the city meant that most civilians (outside perhaps the immediate neighborhood of the Trade Fair Palace) were not confronted by large groups of Jews trudging to the collection point. By contrast, across most of the Protectorate, the nearly total removal of a town’s Jewish population within a few days was a cataclysmic event. Whereas in Prague the process played out over more than two years, almost everywhere else the occupation could be split clearly into life with Jews and life without. In Třešť, Jarmila Špírková recalled the sudden departure of her hometown’s Jews: “It was dark. And all of them went. They went to the train, to the main station. Our parents woke us and we looked out of the window. . . . and we saw, how the Jews went. Every one of them carried a suitcase or dragged one of those bags. They stopped, looked around. . . . And then the train went off. . . . It all took place without a sound.”124 It soon became clear that certain categories of individuals could be exempted, at least temporarily, from transports. As in Germany itself, Jews with “Aryan” spouses either were not summoned or could have themselves removed from transport lists, but only if they remained married. If they divorced or their nonJewish spouse passed away, they became eligible for deportation. Meanwhile, their children did not necessarily enjoy the same protection. If the children had

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been registered in the Jewish community in 1935 or after, the Nazis counted them as so-called Geltungsjuden (“deemed to be Jews”) and ordered that they be deported once they reached the age of fourteen. Once it became widely known that marriage could delay transport, some Jews rapidly wedded non-Jews, thanks to a loophole in the racial laws opened up by the Nazis’ failure to approve a ban on marriage between Czech “Aryans” and Jews until March 1942. In addition to the intermarried, individuals who were sick could petition for a delay of their transport date, but eventually they too had to go. The other major group that was exempted from the transports, at least until 1943, comprised employees of the Jewish Religious Community. The relatively privileged position of community employees among the powerless Jews unsurprisingly led to resentment and anger directed not at the original agents of persecution but at the messengers and those who had to carry out the measures. Although community employees worked to ease the suffering of Jews overall, their positions did temporarily protect themselves and their family members from deportation. As a result, jobs with the Community became particularly valuable (and included other perks, like the right to eat at the community canteen). Kaufmannová’s experience with Jewish Religious Community officials illustrates the double-sided nature of their insider status. On the one hand, in her memoirs she harshly criticizes officials who on a daily basis seemed to display little sympathy for ordinary Jews. On the other hand, a relative of Kaufmannová who worked for the Community warned her in advance of her upcoming transport order and thus gave her extra time to prepare to go underground.125 For their part leading Jewish officials were the targets of verbal and even corporal abuse from the Nazis. At the outset of the transports, the Nazis sent a message to the Jewish leadership when they arrested Hanuš Bonn and his deputy, who were responsible for registration. The two men died shortly afterward in the Mauthausen concentration camp.126 In the context of ubiquitous Nazi repression, historian Wolf Gruner has correctly assessed the efforts of the Jewish leaders to be acts of resistance, not passive accommodation: “Under the strict watch of the Security Police [SD], the Jewish Community and its officials in the Protectorate actively tried, through the expansion of welfare, emigration assistance, and labor assignments to soften the impact of persecution.”127 The work of the Community did not end with the cleaning out of apartments. From the summer of 1942, Salo Krämer, the former head of the Ostrava community, directed the so-called Treuhandstelle (trust office), which managed dozens of warehouses throughout Prague. There, Jewish employees sorted the possessions of departed Jews and identified the most valuable goods that the Germans could then sell for profit. At the same time as Krämer’s crew dealt with

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what individual families left behind, the museum department focused on the possessions of Jewish communities from around the Protectorate. The Jewish Museum was not a new creation; it had been founded before World War I with the aim of gathering together valuable liturgical items from the considerable number of synagogues around Bohemia and Moravia which had been closed when their parishioners migrated to cities or overseas. The wholesale deportation of Jews from outside Prague in 1942 suddenly gave the museum a new meaning to its mission: to collect religious objects, including Torahs, to protect them from harm, and hopefully to return them to their original homes after the war. Alfred Engel, the Brno secondary-school teacher who had helped found and curate the Jewish Central Museum for Moravia-Silesia, traveled around the Protectorate to cata logue and arrange the transfer to Prague of items from Bohemian and Moravian synagogues, including the erstwhile Mikulov collection that had itself been dispatched first to Brno for safekeeping in the troubled year of 1938.128 The Nazis in Prague also tasked the museum’s staff with preparing historical exhibits about the region’s Jewry at the moment when the very same men had slated it for extermination.129 Outside Prague and Brno, the Central Office first summoned 2,604 Jews from the Pilsen region for deportation to Theresienstadt in mid-January 1942. Over the next twelve months, transports emptied out one region after another. The Germans brought the Jews first to a central location, in some areas the seat of the Oberlandrat (for example, Pilsen or Olomouc), but in others to a city into which the Oberlandrat had already ordered many local Jews to be concentrated (for example, Mladá Boleslav and Uherský Brod). Following Pilsen, and interspersed with deportations from Prague, series of transports left Kladno, Brno, České Budějovice, and Třebíč in the late winter and early spring of 1942. After the assassination of Heydrich in late May 1942, the Germans sent a single “punishment” transport directly from Prague to be murdered at Ujazdów in occupied Poland. Only a single Jew of those 1,000 deportees survived the war. In June 1942 the Jews of Kolín were also sent to Theresienstadt, followed by the Jews of Olomouc later that summer, and then from Ostrava, Tábor, and Klatovy in the autumn. In December  1942 the Jews of Pardubice and Hradec Králové boarded transport trains, and then, finally, in January 1943, came the communities of Mladá Boleslav and Uherský Brod. More than a year elapsed between the first and last major deportations from the regions. During that period, how (and whether) a Jew lived depended greatly on where he or she (once) resided. While some already languished in walled ghettos and faced starvation, disease, and the threat of further deportation, others still lived among non-Jews, if not in their original homes. For the Jews of Mladá Boleslav, the relatively late date of transport meant more than two and a

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half years of precarious existence in the city’s dilapidated castle. For the region around Uherský Brod, the additional months were marked by particularly vicious antisemitic measures enacted by local officials aggrieved by the necessity to put up with Jews longer than their colleagues in other areas. As the last transports left Uherský Brod, the Central Office took the next step in the formal destruction of Jewish life in Bohemia and Moravia. The Germans abolished the Jewish Religious Community of Prague, sent its top leaders to Theresienstadt, and replaced them with a “Jewish Council of Elders” headed by Krämer. He, however, only lasted in his new position till the summer of 1943, when the Germans ordered the deportation of the remaining Jewish officials who were not in mixed marriages. From then on Jewish life in Bohemia and Moravia outside of Theresienstadt was in the hands of people married to non-Jews. Even before the occupation of Bohemia and Moravia, the Nazis differentiated among types of intermarried couples and their children. According to the regulations put into place in Germany after Kristallnacht, authorities distinguished between “privileged” and “unprivileged” intermarriages. In the first category were families with minor children who had not been registered with the Jewish community in 1935 or after (so-called Mischlinge of the first degree). By contrast, intermarried families were unprivileged if their children were “deemed to be Jews” (Geltungsjuden) because they had been registered with the Jewish community in 1935 or after. For those couples without children, the Nazis distinguished by sex: A childless Jewish woman with an “Aryan” husband was considered privileged, but a childless intermarried Jewish man was not. As in Nazi Germany, in the Protectorate the status of property depended on the identity of the leading male in the household, such that most intermarried gentile women lived in “Jewish homes” while intermarried Jewish women lived in “Aryan” ones. In practice, that status determined who faced eviction and who could remain for most of the occupation in the same house or apartment. In contrast to the situation in Nazi Germany, however, “privileged” Jews married to Czech gentiles had to wear Stars of David in public after September 1941 (although Jewish women married to Germans in the Protectorate did not). In theory, intermarried Jews had to obey the same antisemitic restrictions as other Jews, but in practice their intimate ties made it difficult for authorities to prevent them from evading certain measures. For example, even intermarried Jews could not purchase newspapers or tobacco, but their non-Jewish spouses could share those banned items with them at home. Jewish ration coupons reduced what an intermarried family could eat, but the non-Jewish spouse could still procure foods that were other wise off limits to “non-Aryans.” Most critically, intermarried Jews were exempted from deportation during the period

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of major transports, but only if they remained married. From the beginning of the occupation, intermarried couples faced the existential question of whether they, either collectively as a nuclear family or individually as partners, would fare better if divorced. In the first years of the occupation, before the murderous consequences of the Nazi plans became clear, many intermarried couples divorced in the hope that the “Aryan” partner would not lose a job or the family’s property, or could protect their children. Although an unknown number of intermarried Jews were arrested by the Gestapo and sent to concentration camps individually, the vast majority were still alive in the Protectorate after most Jews had already been deported to Theresienstadt and beyond. As the last Jews living among non-Jews, the intermarried became responsible for what remained of Jewish affairs. After the Nazis sent Krämer off to Theresienstadt in July 1943, František Friedman, who had a non-Jewish wife, became the head of the Jewish Council of Elders. Intermarried Jews and their non-Jewish spouses also increasingly became the targets of antisemites in public and in the press. The Central Office continued to send divorced and widowed intermarried Jews, Geltungsjuden over the age of fourteen, and eventually Mischlinge (children of “mixed race”) in smaller transports to labor camps and Theresienstadt. In the summer and fall of 1944, the Germans then summoned the non-Jewish husbands of Jewish women for forced labor, in many cases before the women themselves had been interned. In September 1944 the remaining intermarried Jews of working age from outside the capital were ordered to Prague and held at the Hagibor camp, where they labored at splitting mica (used as an insulator in electronics) for the German armed forces. Finally, from January to March  1945, the Germans deported 3,654 intermarried Jews and Mischlinge to Theresienstadt.130

Theresienstadt and Beyond In 1940 the city of Theresienstadt (Terezín) had more than 7,000 residents, who were forcibly resettled in the subsequent two years to make way for the ghetto inhabitants, who at the most overcrowded time numbered nearly 60,000.131 By then, across the river from the main city, the Germans had already turned the “Small Fortress”—whose inmates had once included Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s assassin, Gavrilo Princip—into a concentration camp for political prisoners from the Protectorate and later from the ghetto as well. In all, from 1941 to 1945, the Germans deported more than 140,000 Jews to Theresienstadt from the Protectorate and other parts of Europe. The Germans then shipped 87,000 Jews from there to other ghettos and killing centers. Approximately 34,000 Jews perished within Theresienstadt’s walls.

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Theresienstadt occupied a liminal status in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Technically within its borders but outside the control of any of its officials, the walled city offered both terror and a degree of hope. For Bohemian and Moravian Jews, Theresienstadt existed within the mental map of their homeland; some were familiar with the city from past military ser vice. Even the language used by the Nazis, and repeated by the Jewish Community officials, reflected an apparent distinction between transport to Theresienstadt and to the dreaded “East.” The community’s final report for 1943 used three categories for Jews who had left the Protectorate in the previous four years: Auswanderung, Abwanderung, and Wohnsitzverlegung. The first, “emigration,” applied to those who had left with official approval for countries not under German rule (at the time). The report used a second term, “migration,” for those Jews whom the Nazis had deported directly to ghettos in occupied Eastern Europe. By contrast, those who had been sent first to Theresienstadt received the label “change in residence,” even though by the time the report was completed, its authors were well aware that many Jews had already been further transported to destinations beyond Bohemia.132 For many Protectorate Jews the subterfuge of the Theresienstadt ghetto offered just enough hope to comply with summons and not go underground and thus risk the lives of other Jews, who would have been called for transport in place of anyone who failed to show. Nevertheless, the number of Jews, who sought to delay transport through claims of sickness or who committed suicide on the eve of deportation indicates that many did not believe the Nazis’ false promises about Theresienstadt. Ultimately, the vast majority of Protectorate Jews passed through the gates of Theresienstadt. In several ways, however, even after arriving in the ghetto, Jews remained part of the Protectorate. On and off again, inmates of the ghetto could correspond with relatives outside and even receive limited packages from them. What remained of the Jewish Community in Prague struggled to find materials and goods that could be delivered to the ghetto to alleviate the suffering of the people there and help make their work more productive. Bribes to the Czech gendarmes who guarded the perimeter of the ghetto sometimes enabled prisoners to contact friends and loved ones outside.133 The Germans sent labor battalions from Theresienstadt beyond the city’s walls to work in forests, coal mines, and the Prague ironworks.134 After the Germans murdered the entire male population of the Czech village of Lidice in retaliation for the assassination of Heydrich, thirty Jewish prisoners from Theresienstadt were made to dig graves for the corpses and bury them.135 In the first months of the Theresienstadt ghetto, when the original inhabitants of the walled city had not yet been relocated, the Germans confined Jews to barracks. Only after the resettlement of the city’s non-Jews had been com-

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pleted did Jews spread out across the whole town. Within the walls a Jewish council ran daily affairs at the behest of the SS, which maintained order from outside through what Anna Hájková terms “constructive violence.”136 In January and February 1942, the SS publicly hanged sixteen Jews for alleged contacts with the outside world, but after that the SS removed alleged smugglers to the nearby Small Fortress for torture and execution beyond the eyes of the ghetto’s inhabitants. Just as in the Protectorate itself, within the ghetto the Germans rarely murdered Jews directly, opting instead to kill them through attrition by starvation and disease, or after deportation to points elsewhere. Nonetheless, the dependence of ghetto residents on imports of food and the threat of punishment by further deportation maintained an atmosphere of anxiety and terror within the walls. The Germans appointed Jakob Edelstein to be the first head of the ghetto’s Jewish Council of Elders. In all, the Zionists, who had been a minority movement among Bohemian and Moravian Jews, made up half of the twelve-man

Figure 24. Jewish prisoners being marched into a building in Theresienstadt, 1944. © Photograph Ivan Vojtěch Frič, Courtesy of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC.

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council. Two of the first transports to arrive in the ghetto, on November 24 and December 4, 1941, were composed of 1,341 young men from the Aufbaukommando (construction squad), who became an elite in the ghetto in the following years and were generally spared further deportation until 1943.137 Edelstein’s policies, like those of other Jewish council heads in Eastern Europe, focused on saving as many lives as possible by making the ghetto productive enough for the Germans to want to avoid losing labor through further deportations to the East. At first the Aufbaukommando worked to prepare the city for other Bohemian and Moravian Jews, and in subsequent years the entire population of the ghetto toiled daily to produce for the Germans. The ghetto leadership established workshops that sewed clothes and underwear, made clogs and slippers, darned socks, and repaired gloves for the Germans.138 The “productionist” ethos of the ghetto soon led to the prioritizing of the needs of younger workers over other residents. Those employed in heavy labor were afforded less meager rations (to the extent possible) and exempted from further deportation (for as long as possible). In January 1943 the Nazis demanded that the ghetto leadership be changed to better represent the Jews from Austria and Germany, who had been deported to the ghetto in large numbers beginning in June 1942. Edelstein became just one of a three-man leadership, including Paul Eppstein, the former executive director of the Reich Association of Jews, and Rabbi Benjamin Murmelstein, a former top official in the Jewish Religious Community of Vienna. On November 9, 1943, the Germans arrested Edelstein and several employees of the ghetto registry because they had allegedly covered up the escape of Jews from Theresienstadt.139 Two days later, the Germans ordered a full count of every inhabitant of Theresienstadt. All 36,000 Jews, who were not too sick to walk, had to assemble on a field outside the walls. About three hundred people died of exhaustion over the sixteen hours that the Jews had to stand at attention.140 Miroslav Kárný identified three main purposes to the walled ghetto: as a concentration and transit center, as a site of mass murder by attrition, and, fi nally, as an instrument to deceive both the prisoners and those outside.141 The Germans originally planned and utilized Theresienstadt, like ghettos elsewhere in Eu rope, to concentrate and isolate Jews—first those of the Protectorate, then from Germany and annexed Austria, and then in smaller numbers from elsewhere (including the Netherlands, Slovakia, and Denmark). The ghetto’s role as a transit camp became horrifically clear already in January 1942 when the Germans ordered the Jewish Council to assemble prisoners for transport to the East. Fewer than two months after the arrival of the first Aufbaukommando, Theresienstadt’s Jews learned that their stay in the ghetto was likely temporary. The first two transports of one thousand prisoners ended in

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Riga, followed by another two thousand Jews sent in March 1942 to Izbica in occupied Poland. From then until February  1943, the regular rhythm of incoming transports from around the Protectorate was matched by several transports a month that left Theresienstadt. For the first half of 1942, those transports ended in other ghettos, from where victims were later taken en masse to their deaths by shooting or by gassing in killing centers, including those at Belzec and Sobibor. From September 1942 onward, nearly all transports from Theresienstadt went directly to killing centers: first, a series of ten trains that ended in Treblinka, and then six to Auschwitz. A few days after the last regional mass transport from the Protectorate left Uherský Brod on 31 January 1943, transports from Theresienstadt to the East also ceased for a period of seven months, leaving the ghetto’s residents in a state of limbo. Theresienstadt itself was a place of death through attrition, due to intentionally limited resources and deliberate overcrowding. In particular, the arrival of Austrian and German Jews taxed the resources of the ghetto. The first group of German Jews arrived in Theresienstadt on June 2, 1942. Three weeks later Jews began to arrive from Vienna. Unlike the Jews from Bohemia and Moravia, those from Germany and Austria were disproportionately elderly. At the most overcrowded moment, in the summer of 1942, each of the nearly sixty thousand residents of the ghetto had approximately 1.6 square meters (17 square feet) of living space. During the period from August through October 1942, when the population reached its maximum, more than ten thousand ghetto residents perished from starvation and disease. The ghetto’s lack of facilities for proper hygiene, exemplified by an insufficient number of latrines (for which there were always lines), resulted in epidemics of stomach and digestive illnesses. The Germans responded to the overcrowding they had created by ordering the removal of the old and sick to the killing centers. In all, thirty-three thousand Jews perished in the ghetto itself, mainly from starvation and the diseases it produced.142 The Nazi attempt to use Theresienstadt as a deceptive model of Jewish selfadministration opened up space for Jews to express themselves artistically. From as early as December 1941, Jewish musicians who had managed to bring their instruments with them practiced together and performed regularly for their fellow prisoners in events orga nized by the ghetto self-administration. Jews played existing pieces, but also composed new ones both for orchestra and the stage. Others acted in cabaret per formances that satirized the insanity of the ghetto.143 Most hauntingly, the children of Theresienstadt, including Petr Ginz, captured daily life and their hopes in sketches and paintings. Within the ghetto the religious maintained their rituals as much as possible, particularly when it came to burial rites for the dead. When religious practices were banned, Jews

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created a concealed prayer house and used makeshift rooms to conduct ser vices with Torah, menorah, shofar, and other liturgical objects that had been brought into the ghetto.144 Ghetto inhabitants held weddings, celebrated Hanukkah, and sang psalms. The ghetto had its own library, with several hundred thousand books, and learned inhabitants offered thousands of lectures on political, historical, and religious topics during the years of internment.145 As German war fortunes turned for the worse and news of the killing centers reached the outside world, the importance of “model” Theresienstadt increased. From the beginning the Nazis had used Theresienstadt as a tool to deceive both Jews and their non-Jewish neighbors that the transports from Bohemia, Moravia, Germany, and Austria would not end in occupied Poland. The Nazis promoted the decision to send elderly German Jews with fraudulent contracts that claimed to ensure the deportees a place in a retirement home. Once the prisoners were confined at Theresienstadt, the Nazis maintained the illusion of Jewish self-rule through the printing of special ghetto currency and stamps. Those efforts culminated in the infamous June 23, 1944, visit of International Red Cross delegates to Theresienstadt. In preparation for the tour, Jews had to clean and beautify the ghetto to make it look like the “Jewish Settlement Area” the Nazis claimed it to be. The city gained a café, grocery store, pharmacy, bakery, bandstand, new street signs, and benches. Little more than a month before the visit, the Germans also alleviated ghetto overcrowding by shipping more than seventy-five hundred Jews to Auschwitz. In the course of the visit, Jews publicly performed theater, attended lectures, played soccer, and held a mock trial of an alleged thief. The delegates met with “Mayor” Eppstein, who assured them (on SS instructions) that the Jews were not in danger of deportation. The Red Cross delegation accepted that the ghetto was a “final camp” and assured in its report that “there are few populations whose health is as carefully looked after as in Theresienstadt.”146 The Nazis followed up the visit with the production of a film designed to portray the ghetto as an idyll, but that was never released during the war. For the Jews of Bohemia and Moravia, Theresienstadt represented neither the end of Nazi deception nor of the existence of a separate community. On September 6, 1943, after the seven-month hiatus following the mass deportation from Uherský Brod, the Germans ordered more than five thousand Jews to board two trains from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz. Unlike earlier deportees, however, the Jews on those two trains were not forced to undergo selection on arrival in Birkenau; instead the SS segregated them as a group in a special section of the camp. The prisoners of the Theresienstadt Family Camp, as the

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section has become known, included both men and women, in separate barracks, but not divided by barbed wire, and even children. Although they endured cramped conditions, starvation rations, rampant disease, and sadistic brutality, the Family Camp’s residents remained part of their native community and did not face the disorienting Babel-like linguistic cacophony that characterized the rest of Birkenau. Despite the horrific conditions, for a brief time they still existed in the sort of Czech-German bilingual world they had once known in Bohemia and Moravia. Within the separate section, the Jews also still lived with leaders they had known from Theresienstadt, including Fredy (Alfred) Hirsch, the irrepressible caregiver of those children who had survived the journey to Auschwitz. In December 1943 a transport brought another five thousand Jews from Theresienstadt to the Family Camp. Then, as part of the Nazis’ reduction of the ghetto’s population before the Red Cross visit, in May 1944 more than seventy-five hundred Jews were shipped to the Family Camp. For the Nazis, the Family Camp was seemingly an extension, or rather a backstop, to the deception that they had created in Theresienstadt. Should outsiders inquire about the fate of transports that had left the ghetto for the East, they could be taken to see the men, women, and children still alive in Birkenau. That intent, however, meant that the anomalous conditions and the very existence of the Family Camp were merely temporary measures. More than three months before the Red Cross visit to Theresienstadt, the SS murdered 3,792 Jews from the Family Camp in the Birkenau gas chambers on March 8–9, 1944—the largest single wartime massacre of Czechoslovak citizens of any religion. In his buried testimony about that horrific night, Sonderkommando Zalman Gradowski wrote that some of the women went to their deaths singing the Czech national anthem, “Hatikvah,” and “The Internationale.”147 After the Red Cross delegation declared itself satisfied with the visit to Theresienstadt, the Nazis decided that the Family Camp had outlived its purpose. The SS chose thirty-five hundred Jews, who were deemed still capable of work, and then murdered the remainder in the gas chambers on July 10–12, 1944.148 On September 28, 1944, just three months after the Red Cross had reported that Theresienstadt was a “final camp,” the Germans moved to empty the ghetto of its remaining inhabitants. The day before, the Germans had arrested and shot Eppstein. Over the next thirty days, they shipped 18,042 Jews to Auschwitz. After the transports of intermarried and Mischlinge had replenished the ghetto in the winter of 1945, Red Cross representatives came to the ghetto for a second time, on April 6, 1945, and took over its administration on May 2. In the final weeks, survivors of death marches brought typhoid with them, which spread through the ghetto. When the war came to a close, 17,320 Jews still remained

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alive within Theresienstadt’s walls. Several thousand more intermarried Jews survived outside in the Protectorate, and a mere three thousand Jews returned alive from concentration camps. That small remnant could hardly suffice to reestablish the vibrant and diverse communities that only a few years before had been spread throughout the lands of Bohemia and Moravia.

C h apter 7

Periphery and Center: Jews in the Bohemian Lands from 1945 to the Present Kateřina Čapková

In July 1945, just weeks after the liberation, Chaja and Emil Davidovič miraculously reunited in Sighet, a Romanian town on the border with Ukraine, where they had lived right before the war. Emil was born in Khust in Carpathian Ruthenia, which was part of Czechoslova kia before the war, and the couple had therefore held Czechoslovak citizenship up to 1939. Five years later, in 1944, they were deported to Auschwitz. Their two children, Tibor and Jaffa, born in 1942 and 1943, were murdered there. The parents were selected for slave labor in concentration camps in Germany. After liberation they desperately searched for their family members in their hometown. Alice Lutwak, their daughter, recalls that in Sighet her father learned that his eldest brother had survived and was now in the north Bohemian town of Varnsdorf (Warndorf). “My father didn’t quite know where Varnsdorf was but he decided that they had to go someplace—so they went to Varnsdorf. I was born in Varnsdorf in 1946, and my younger brother, Robert, was born two and a half years later in Rumburk. My father was employed as the secretary of the Jewish community in Varnsdorf.”1 The story of the Davidovič family was not exceptional. After the war more than 90  percent of the members of over a dozen post–World War II Jewish communities in the border region of Bohemia (the former Sudetenland) were from Carpathian Ruthenia. They introduced Orthodox rites into communities that had been unequivocally Reform before the war. In Varnsdorf, where Alice was born, a totally new Jewish community, built only by migrants from Carpathian Ruthenia, was established after the Shoah. Many migrants had

Map 13. Central Europe in 1949.

In order to trace key demographic changes in Jewish settlement in the Bohemian Lands, the same twentythree Jewish communities are shown on the maps throughout this book. The percentage indicates the size of each Jewish community in relation to the total number of Jews in the Bohemian Lands in the period represented. An “x” indicates that no Jewish community existed in that location at the time. For further information on these Jewish communities, see the supplementary essay by Helena Klímová and Lenka Matušíková.

Map 14. Jewish Population of the Bohemian Lands in 1946 (approx. 23,000).

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followed relatives; others came to the border region as soldiers of the 1st Czechoslovak Independent Army Corps, which had fought alongside the Red Army. Moses Adler was one such soldier. Born in 1913 in a shtetl close to Khust, he was recovering in the military hospital in Prague in the summer of 1945, having been seriously wounded at the battle of Dukla Pass, Slovakia, in the autumn of 1944. While he was still in the hospital, a rabbi from Carpathian Ruthenia visited Moses and suggested that he marry Gertrude Ackermann—a young Jewish woman born in 1927, in a village close to Mukachevo (Munkács, Munkatsh)—who after being liberated in Bergen-Belsen ended up in Prague. Moses and Gertrude married in Prague in 1946 and moved to Ústí nad Labem (Aussig), northwest Bohemia, soon afterward. Moses became a founding member of the local Jewish community.2 The situation in central Bohemia (except for Prague) and in most of Moravia was different. “There wasn’t much waiting for us in our hometown,” recalled Pavel Fried (1930–2019). When he and his parents returned to his native Třebíč (Trebitsch), in south Moravia, in 1945, they were three of nine surviving Jews from a community of more than three hundred before the war. Pavel’s sister Erika, together with her husband and one child, had been murdered in Auschwitz on March 8, 1944, when more than three thousand Jews from the “Theresienstadt Family Camp” were sent to gas chambers in the course of one night.3 Pavel and his parents remained in Theresienstadt (Terezín) till the end of the war. In Třebíč, they had to stay in a hotel for some time before they could return to their prewar flat, from which all their furniture had been taken during their absence. Pavel Fried recalled: “As one of the returnees, my father was greeted in Třebíč by the leading official of the region. In his office he told my father to be seated. My father immediately noticed that ‘his lordship’ had furnished the room with our chairs. We were glad that we had returned at all from the concentration camp, so my father ignored such trivialities.”4 Pavel got a certificate to make Aliyah, but decided in the end not to leave his parents, who would have been left alone. In 1956 he married a Protestant woman.

New Setting: Demographics, Migration, Institutions, Legal Status The demographics of the Jews in the Bohemian Lands, including their distribution, changed radically in the aftermath of the Holocaust. The major cause was genocide, but radical changes were also brought about by postwar migration. After the war many exiles came back to see whether anyone from their families had survived and whether there might be a future for them and their families in postwar Czechoslova kia. Most of those returnees had been soldiers

Figure 25. Gertrude Adler, born in Subcarpathian Ruthenia, with her son in Ústí nad Labem in 1948. Her left arm bears a tattooed number from Auschwitz. © Private archive of Malvina/Malke Hoffmann.

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in the British, U.S., or Red armies or served in the 1st Czechoslovak Independent Army Corps. Their stay in Czechoslovakia often turned out to be only temporary. Moreover, among those who had decided to stay, many did not choose to settle down in their place of birth or where they had lived before. This is especially true of Jews from Slovakia and Carpathian Ruthenia. Thousands of Slovak Jews—survivors of concentration camps as well as those who had been in exile—decided to resettle in the Bohemian Lands, mostly in Prague and in the border regions from where the German-speaking population had just been expelled. In their testimonies, the fear of antisemitism in Slovakia and the experience of anti-Jewish violence during the war dominate their reasons for making such a move. An additional reason for the Carpathian Jews to move was the annexation of Carpathian Ruthenia to the Soviet Union, based on a CzechoslovakSoviet treaty signed in June 1945. At least eight thousand of them decided to move to the Bohemian Lands. As early as in the last months of the war, soldiers in the Allied armies, including the 1st Czechoslovak Independent Army Corps, led by General Ludvík Svoboda, were promised property and positions in the former Sudetenland after the expulsion of the Germans. Moses Adler, for instance, was granted a license to keep a tobacco shop in Ústí nad Labem in 1946.5 The only reliable estimates of the Jewish population of the postwar Bohemian Lands appear in documents of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC). The Council of Jewish Communities in Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia (Rada židovských náboženských obcí v Čechách, na Moravě a ve Slezsku), which became the umbrella organization of all the Jewish communities of the Bohemian Lands, supplied the JDC with the numbers of people they believed would need medical, financial, and social assistance. There were said to have been about 23,000 Jews in the Bohemian Lands, of whom 8,000 were from Carpathian Ruthenia. The number of Jewish migrants from Slovakia was probably also in the thousands, but we have no statistics for them. In contrast to the Jews of Carpathian Ruthenia, the surviving Jews of Slovakia had no problems demonstrating their Czechoslovak citizenship, and there was no reason to count them separately. According to the reports of the OSE (Œuvre de secours aux enfants), the French Jewish humanitarian organization in Czechoslova kia, about 2,000 of the total number of Jews in the Bohemian Lands were Polish Jews who had been liberated in concentration and labor camps in the former Sudetenland and decided to remain in Czechoslova kia.6 All in all, about half of the Jewish population of the Bohemian Lands right after the war were migrants who were often more religious than native-born Jews and whose mother tongue was not Czech, but Yiddish, Hungarian, Slovak, or Polish (mostly a combination of those). They came from regions which, from

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the Prague perspective, were generally seen as peripheral, and it is no coincidence that they settled again on the periphery of the Bohemian Lands. Despite being on the geographical margins, they considerably challenged the overall reformist and Czech or German character of Jewish settlement in the Bohemian Lands. For the first time the Bohemian Lands had a substantial number of Jewish communities whose majority observed the Orthodox or even the Hasidic rite. Some Carpathian Jews had settled in the Bohemian Lands (mostly in Prague) even before World War II and were already important supporters of Orthodoxy in Prague and of Jewish education in Bohemia, since Jewish students from Carpathian Ruthenia were frequently employed as Jewish religion teachers at primary schools.7 In the interwar period, however, they constituted only a tiny proportion of the local population. This changed after the Shoah. In a report from mid-1946, Israel J. Jacobson, the head of the JDC in Czechoslovakia, claims that the JDC was trying to arrange the ser vices of a shochet (ritual slaughterer) for every larger community, “especially where there now reside Jews from Slovakia and Sub-Carpathia.” The demand for talitot (prayer shawls), tefillin (phylacteries), mezuzot (small boxes affixed to the doorposts of Jewish homes), and tzitziot (ritual fringes) was also enormous. The JDC aided the Jewish communities in installing mikvot. The report continues: “It is hoped that by the end of this year mikvot will be established throughout the Czech Lands wherever Jews from Eastern countries now reside and wish to observe ‘taharat nashim’ [ritual purity of women].”8 As the report reveals, the JDC helped to build up a postwar infrastructure for the practice of the Orthodox Jewish religion, which had been almost totally absent from the Bohemian Lands since the second half of the nineteenth century. According to JDC statistics from 1946, of the 23,000 Jews in the Bohemian Lands, 5,000 were so called B-Jews (in contrast to A-Jews): Jews who were not members of Jewish communities before the war but who were considered Jews or Mischlinge according to the racist laws.9 The division of A-Jews and B-Jews in the statistics of the Jewish communities and JDC records reminds us that Nazi policies had not only led to the genocide of Jews but also further complicated the (self-)definition of the Jews and influenced the categorization of people by foreign Jewish charitable institutions. Despite the postwar condemnation of racist Nazi politics, the Nuremberg Laws had (and indeed continue to have) an impact on the postwar understanding of who was a Jew. Due to the extraordinarily high number of people who married non-Jews in interwar Bohemia and Moravia—who, moreover, stood a greater chance of surviving the Shoah—about half of the Jews in the late 1940s who were born in Bohemia and Moravia were people who had only one Jewish parent or a non-Jewish partner.

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As a result of external and internal migration, the Jewish population in the Bohemian Lands was very unevenly distributed. According to the JDC statistics from the first months of 1946, 19,000 Jews lived in Bohemia but fewer than 4,000 in Moravia and Silesia. Another typical phenomenon related to migration was urbanization. The decline of rural communities, which had started in the mid-nineteenth century, was completed after the war. All of the fifty-three reestablished communities10—which made up a third of the number of communities in 1938—were exclusively in towns and cities. Whereas in Poland a high number of Jewish survivors left the villages or towns where they had lived before the Holocaust because they now feared for their safety, such concerns were not dominant in the Bohemian Lands. Survivors in rural Bohemia and Moravia often remained in their place of birth, and either did not attend religious services at all or traveled to larger cities only on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.11 This was true also of Pavel Fried, who attended synagogue with his parents in Brno (Brünn) on the High Holidays.12 The combination of migration, births, and deaths caused disruptions in the religious, social, and cultural life of the Jewish communities of the Bohemian Lands. The JDC reports from the first postwar years already distinguish among three types of community: the community in Prague, the communities in the borderlands (especially north and west Bohemia), and the communities in the interior of Bohemia and Moravia (basically the territory of the former Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia outside Prague). Prague, with about nine thousand Jews, had the largest Jewish population of local survivors as well as of migrants from Slovakia and Carpathian Ruthenia. It was also the administrative center of Jewish affairs, not only for the Bohemian Lands but to some extent also for the whole republic. Jews born in the Bohemian Lands clearly dominated the administrative structure; the synagogues tended to be used by the migrants. In the borderlands, the Carpathian and Slovak migrants constituted in most cases more than 90 percent of the communities’ members.13 The JDC was surprised that almost no elderly people lived in the borderlands and that the number of children was growing rapidly in the second half of the 1940s. Most of those Jewish migrants had no university education and were very welcome in regions with a shortage of factory workers and artisans after the expulsion of the local Germans. The communities between Prague and the border regions and in Moravia were—except for Brno and Moravská Ostrava (Mährisch Ostrau)—small, mostly with native-born Jews and a high proportion of people married to non-Jews. The dramatic changes in the history of the Jews of the Bohemian Lands after World War II were caused not only by genocide and migration but also by a different institutional and legal framework from the one that existed after World

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War I. This is true in two respects. First, the Czechoslovak government refused to acknowledge Jews as a national minority after 1945. And second, as a result of the German occupation, all organizations of the Jewish communities in the Bohemian Lands had been merged. In the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, all Jews (under the racist laws) had to become members of the centralized Prague Jewish community, which was in turn responsible for implementing Nazi policies. The Council of Jewish Communities in Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia, established in September  1945, was largely built on the infrastructure of the war time Prague Jewish Community. The transition was surprisingly smooth. An October 1945 circular to all Jewish communities outside Prague stated that from that moment on all correspondence to Prague headquarters should be addressed not to the Jewish Community Prague, Department for the Countryside, but to the council.14 Its powers were expanded to the border regions, which during the war had not been part of the Protectorate. Moreover, even though some individuals from the leadership left their positions at the end of the war, many of the surviving war time employees from the different departments of the Prague Jewish Community continued in their positions after the war. Despite the state’s nonrecognition of Jewish national policies in postwar Czechoslova kia, any Jewish organization could reregister with the associations’ registry of the Ministry of the Interior. Indeed, most of the prewar Jewish organizations and associations did renew their status. In most cases renewal was a mere formality. It was assumed that if the associations did not reregister, their property, Aryanized (confiscated) in the Protectorate and then confiscated from the Germans after the war, would now fall to the state. This is why one often encounters the same ten or so people, mostly office-holders of the Prague Jewish Community, requesting the renewal of dozens of Jewish associations. Among the most active in the early postwar years were the Zionists, who—though they could not take part in politics—renewed some of the activities and institutions they had previously organized for youth, including sports associations. They established several hakhsharot—training centers for work in agriculture to prepare for life in Eretz Israel. Since interest in the Zionist movement was much higher in Slovakia than in the Bohemian Lands, the seat of the Czechoslovak Zionist Organization was in Bratislava (Pressburg). After the communist takeover in late February  1948, the possibilities of Zionist work were further limited, and in 1950 all the recently renewed Jewish associations and organizations were closed down by the regime. The leading officials of the council, including Arnošt Frischer15 and Kurt Wehle, left the country, and the council had to accept a parallel leadership, called the Action Committee, which included Jewish communists.

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In October 1949 a law was passed making the Jewish community one of the acknowledged “churches” of Czechoslova kia. The activities of the kehillot, like those of all sixteen churches that had succeeded in getting on the list of state-recognized religious institutions, were subordinated to the State Office for Church Affairs (Státní úřad pro věci církevní). All the officeholders of the churches (including the Jewish community) were now state employees, and had to swear an oath of loyalty to the republic.16 In contrast to the situations in postwar Poland, Yugoslavia, and Romania, where a parallel network of secular Jewish institutions was possible, in Czechoslova kia the Jewish communities remained the only officially allowed organizations of Jewish life until after the collapse of the communist regime in late 1989. The restrictions on Jewish social and administrative infrastructure were only one part of the discriminatory politics of Czechoslova kia in the postwar period. Another was the pressure to assimilate linguistically and “ethnically.” The Czechoslovak president Edvard Beneš, who had headed the Czechoslovak government-in-exile in London, had explicitly stated since 1942 that postwar Czechoslova kia must be a state of Czechs and Slovaks only. For example, in two articles published in the main American establishment periodical on international relations, Foreign Affairs, he suggested that “population transfers” (that is, expulsions) to remove national minorities were the only way to avoid future wars in Europe.17 In postwar Czechoslova kia, Czechoslovak politicians planned to expel from the country not only the Germans but also the Hungarians from Slovakia. (Before 1918, the region was called Upper Hungary.) The latter plan, however, lacked Allied support, so only a limited number of Hungarians were exchanged for Slovaks living in Hungary. In Carpathian Ruthenia, until it was ceded to the Soviet Union after the war, only local inhabitants who had declared Czech or Slovak nationality (ethnicity) in the 1930 census could now opt for Czechoslovak citizenship and legally move to the western parts of the state. Two groups of Jews were most vulnerable in the postwar Bohemian Lands— the German-speaking Jews and the Jews of Carpathian Ruthenia, most of whom had declared Jewish nationality in the 1930 census and were therefore barred from regaining their Czechoslovak citizenship after the war. In both cases the Czechoslovak government refused to make an explicit legal statement that would have clarified the standing of these Jews. This left the local administration, as well as different ministries, with the power to decide their legal status. The German-speaking Jews were the first to be barred from Czechoslovak citizenship, because they were allegedly German. To qualify for consideration for Czechoslovak citizenship, they first had to apply for a certificate of having

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been “anti-fascist” and then ask for an exception to be made for them to regain their citizenship. Not only people who had declared German nationality in the census in 1930 but also those who had declared Jewish nationality in 1930 and were German-speaking struggled to regain Czechoslovak citizenship after 1945. Article 2, section 1 of the presidential decree issued by Edvard Beneš on August 2, 1945, which stripped German and Magyar Czechoslovaks of their citizenship, narrowed the definition of “anti-fascist”: only “persons [of German or Magyar nationality] who can prove that they had remained faithful to the Czechoslovak Republic, who never committed an offense against the Czech and Slovak nations, and who either actively participated in the liberation of Czechoslova kia or suffered under the Nazi or Fascist terror, shall be permitted to retain their Czechoslovak citizenship.”18 Consequently, German and Hungarian Jews (Czechoslovak citizens before the war) had to prove that they met all three conditions of the decree in order to be regarded as anti-fascists and to regain Czechoslovak citizenship. Loyalty to the Czechoslovak republic was often interpreted in strictly nationalist terms; simply having once attended a German-language school or the German University of Prague could thus constitute a betrayal of the Czech nation. It is also clear that the question of citizenship was connected to that of property, because only Czechoslovak citizens could ask for restitution for properties confiscated by the Reich and then by the Czechoslovak government.19 The applications of wealthy German-speaking Jews were therefore often scrutinized more thoroughly than those of others. The approval process could take between several months and two years. It was highly dependent on decisions of the local or district national committees, which were new administrative bodies that had replaced the traditional local councils in Czechoslovak villages and towns after liberation.20 Moreover, even if people already held anti-fascist identity cards, they often faced discrimination because many Czechs refused to distinguish between “good” and “bad” Germans. A memorandum sent by the newly established committee of German-speaking Jews of Chomutov (Komotau) and Žatec (Saaz) to the repatriation department of the Czechoslovak UNRRA (United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration) mission in April  1946 summarizes the hardships of the German-speaking Jews, including so-called Mischlinge and those in “mixed” marriages (of a Jewish and a non-Jewish German): Even though they were harshly persecuted under the Hitler regime [. . .], they—with few exceptions—are now suffering again because they are largely considered “Germans” and treated as such. Nobody acknowledges that nearly all of these Jews were in concentration camps or labor camps and that all those families lost most of their relatives in the gas chambers.

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[. . .] We were not allowed to visit the theaters, concerts, cinemas, and so on, for six years, and we have to do without these again, because some of us do not know Czech and others speak it only with difficulty. We still cannot go to the pubs, unless we decide to do so as mutes.21 Most of those German-speaking Jews therefore decided to leave Czechoslovakia, usually for Germany. Hundreds of people who suffered because of the racist Nazi legislation during the war were, after liberation, included in the transports of German expellees. This was especially true of people in so-called mixed marriages and their children. About three thousand people applied for inclusion in the special transports for “German/Sudeten Jews” organized by the repatriation department of the Czechoslovak UNRRA mission. Only a few hundred could leave with UNRRA—mostly in wagons added to the trains of Social Democrats and communists in the so-called anti-fascist transports. In September 1946 this initiative was stopped by the Czechoslovak government after reports in the foreign press, which stated that Czechoslova kia was expelling its own Jews.22 Jews who did not manage to leave the country individually were now stuck in Czechoslovakia, which did not allow any official use of German (in contrast to Poland, where a network of German-language schools existed in Lower Silesia until 1968). Whereas German-speaking Jews were in danger of being expelled to Germany, Carpathian Jewish migrants were in danger of being “repatriated” (deported) to Transcarpathian Ukraine (the postwar Soviet name for Subcarpathian Ruthenia). The struggle of the Carpathian Jews to regain Czechoslovak citizenship lasted until 1948. Hundreds of those Jews therefore decided to escape illegally to the DP (displaced persons) camps in Germany. Others who wanted to emigrate legally had to stay in Czechoslova kia only because they had no passports. In the end thousands of Carpathian Jews settled in the border regions in the 1950s and early 1960s. Despite their problems getting Czechoslovak citizenship, many of them were welcomed and appreciated as workers in factories after the expulsion of the Germans. Despite their knowledge of Yiddish and Hungarian, rather than Czech or Slovak, all these Jews were forced to use Czech in public. They also preferred to speak Czech at home in the hopes of facilitating their children’s integration into the surrounding society. Yiddish or Hungarian was spoken only in shul, or when the children were not to understand the adults’ conversations. Czech education in par ticu lar, which was the only option for anyone who settled in the Bohemian Lands (in contrast to Slovakia, where Hungarian schools were also available in some regions), reinforced the dominant use of Czech in those families. Czech thus became an important cultural heritage that some of the

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Ruthenian Jews brought abroad in the 1960s when they immigrated to Israel, Germany, the United States, or South American countries (to name only the most frequent destinations). Although in 1945 Czechoslova kia committed itself to punishing Nazis and native collaborators, postwar retribution courts did not specifically focus on crimes that had been committed against the Jews of Bohemia and Moravia. The main law governing prosecution, the Great Retribution Decree of June 1945, did not once mention the word “Jew” and only referred to “racial persecution” regarding attempts to acquire property. Nonetheless, postwar retribution courts convicted and put to death several leading executors of Nazi policy who had ended up in Czechoslovak hands, including the one-time head of the Central Office for Jewish Emigration and final commandant of the Theresienstadt ghetto, Karl Rahm. Although many other Nazis escaped justice, courts throughout Bohemia and Moravia punished SS and Gestapo officers: Willi Steinmann, who ran the Jewish desk of České Budějovice (Budweis) Gestapo from 1939 to 1943, was hanged, and his counterpart in Hradec Králové (Königgrätz), Gestapo officer Friedrich Grazikowski, died in jail in 1947 while awaiting trial. The postwar courts focused their ire in particular on Czech fascists who had vociferously pressed for antisemitic measures and had denounced Jews and “Jew-lovers” to the authorities during the occupation. Tribunals punished dozens of employees of and contributors to antisemitic tabloids, including the editor-in-chief of Aryan Strug gle, Rudolf Novák, who was executed in Prague in March 1947. The next month the Kutná Hora (Kuttenberg) court ordered the hanging of the tabloid’s regional editor, Václav Píša, putting a coda on the punishment of more than twenty contributors to Aryan Strug gle in that region alone.23 In addition to the formal courts, local administrative committees under the authority of the so-called Small Decree judged perpetrators of a range of offenses, including that of antisemitic propaganda. Tribunals punished individuals who had purged Jews from professional organizations, denounced them to the authorities, or attacked them and their property. Approximately one in ten cases tried before the retribution courts in Chrudim, Hradec Králové, and Písek  focused on crimes committed against Jews and against non-Jews who had sought to aid them.24 By contrast, postwar retribution proved largely toothless when it came to cases of the seizure of Jewish property (so-called Aryanization). The Ostrava (Ostrau) people’s court tried only two such cases, and neither led to the punishment of the perpetrator.25 In general, Jews faced great difficulties in regaining what had been taken from them during the war. The Czechoslovak state nationalized larger businesses that the Germans had originally seized. Postwar authorities repeatedly refused to return residences to individual Jews who could

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be counted in any fashion as former members of the country’s German-speaking minority. In cases where Jews had entrusted their family’s possessions to friends and neighbors, survivors received a mixed reception after the war. The employee to whom Ruth Elias’s family had entrusted their possessions received her “coolly,” and even though she recognized her possessions throughout his home, he claimed that the Russians had taken every thing. By contrast, a fellow survivor who had returned with her to Czechoslova kia regained her own family’s Prague apartment with all its furniture.26

The Key Role of Transnational Contexts Jewish communities as well as individuals in the Bohemian Lands had been for centuries part of a dense network of relations which reached beyond these territories, especially to the neighboring regions—Austria, Hungary, Germany, and Poland. These networks were based in particular on family, economics, and the pursuit of rabbinical learning. The migration of Jews from the Bohemian Lands augmented those transnational and soon also transatlantic connections. Jews had left Bohemia and Moravia in high numbers because of the Familiants Laws in the eighteenth century, and many others left for the United States and Vienna during the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, the number of Jews leaving the Bohemian Lands increased considerably in the twentieth century, primarily between 1938 and 1941, from 1945 to 1949, and again between 1964 and 1969. With these migrations and the devastating impact of the Shoah, Czechoslovak Jews outside the country far outnumbered those inside in the second half of the twentieth century. This is also why we find competing narratives of the postwar history of the Jews of the Bohemian Lands based mostly on the place where these interpretations were written. A dominant narrative from the perspective of Czechoslovak Jewish scholars in the United States and Israel was the story of the disappearance and assimilation of the Jews in the territory of Czechoslova kia, a story typical also of other central and eastern European countries in the postwar period, and even of Europe as a whole.27 This is well demonstrated in the valuable publications of the Society for the History of Czechoslovak Jews, an association established in New York in 1961 on the initiative of Kurt Wehle, who was also its first president. The major achievement of the society was the publication of a three-volume history of Jews in the territories of Czechoslovakia, with contributions written by leading scholars born in the Bohemian Lands or Slovakia who combined their research with their own personal testimonies. The articles in the volumes tended to understand the history of the Jews of Czechoslova kia as a closed story, emphasizing the role of the Jews who immigrated to

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the United States and Israel as that of people who were left as the primary bearers of Czechoslovak Jewish heritage after the war.28 By contrast, the Jews who remained in Czechoslova kia and were active in the Jewish communities felt responsible for protecting Jewish religion and heritage, and for bearing witness to the Shoah in Czechoslova kia, despite the hostile environment created by the communist regime. Characteristic of this time was the tension between the deeply engrained transnational nature of the Jewish communities and individuals in the Bohemian Lands and their simultaneous desire to be accepted as an integral part of the highly nationalist Czech society, a tension that had to be dealt with at all times. The existence of strong Czechoslovak Jewish networks abroad had a considerable impact on Jewish life in Czechoslova kia. The Jews who remained in Czechoslova kia were never totally isolated from the centers of Czechoslovak Jewish settlements outside the country, especially in Israel, the United States, Germany, and Switzerland. The most impor tant factors in this network were family ties to relatives abroad. Contacts with the countries outside the Soviet sphere of influence, however, had both advantages and disadvantages. Despite state censorship, people in Czechoslova kia with relatives abroad had better access to information than other Czechoslovaks, who could only turn to the stateowned Czechoslovak mass media. Some could also receive packages from friends and family abroad, and they could use these networks when planning their emigration in the 1960s. Contacts with people on the other side of the Iron Curtain and access to news from outside were also reasons why people from Jewish families were proportionately overrepresented in the movement for the reform of the communist regime in the 1960s and in the later dissident movements. The other side of the coin was that people with contacts abroad were seen as suspect and politically unreliable in the eyes of the Czechoslovak secret police, and many faced discrimination even if they were not part of the political opposition. There are, however, other reasons why it is important to understand the Jews and the Jewish communities in Czechoslova kia and, before that, in the Bohemian Lands as integral parts of transnational Jewish networks beyond the individual level. From the end of the nineteenth century onward, consciousness of the worldwide connections among Jewish communities increased, and several international Jewish institutions were established. Though these institutions differed in their aims and religious or political programs, all of them counted on the solidarity of Jews all over the world and felt a certain responsibility for them. Among the most important Jewish transnational agencies active in Czechoslova kia in the period after World War II were the JDC—to this day still the

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major world Jewish charitable institution—and the World Jewish Congress, established in Geneva in August 1936, which favored the creation of the State of Israel but also was supportive of Jewish communities all over the world. Before 1948 the World Zionist Organization was also active in the territory of Czechoslova kia. After the establishment of the State of Israel, the Israeli embassy in Prague was its main center. Since 1951, the Claims Conference (the Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany) has been the key Jewish institution for compensating Shoah survivors with funds received from the German Federal Republic. Though survivors in Czechoslova kia faced many obstacles to get access to compensation payments, the Société de Secours et d’Entraide, a Swiss organization, distributed compensation also to countries under communist regimes. Financial support and medicine were distributed in Czechoslova kia by the Council of Jewish Communities in Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia and, from there, by the social welfare departments of the individual Jewish communities. Two groups received most of the support: Holocaust survivors (those who were members of Jewish communities) and people from the administration of the communities. It was not only the Jewish communities which were aware of the many transnational connections, however. The Czechoslovak government also clearly understood that after the Shoah the major center of Jewish politics and settlement had shifted from Europe to the United States and Palestine (later Israel). The official Czechoslovak (and, later, Czech) attitude toward local Jews has always been closely connected to the state’s attitude toward Israel and the United States. The second principal aspect in the stance of the Czechoslovak government and the local Communist Party leadership regarding the Jewish community was the use, or rather misuse, of the local Jewish institutions for propaganda purposes and for showing its alleged concern for human rights. The transnational perspective thus reveals the enormous complexity of relations and tensions between the different centers of Jewish settlement on the one hand and the state’s attitude to the Jews in international diplomatic negotiations on the other. Both sets of relations have been intertwined. Two historic events from the first few postwar years are emblematic of the early friendship between Czechoslova kia and the Yishuv (Jewish settlement in Palestine), which since the 1990s have been again part of the dominant CzechIsraeli diplomatic narrative. One is the considerable Czechoslovak role in the transit of hundreds of thousands of mostly Polish Jewish refugees—who were crucial for the creation of the Jewish state—from Poland to DP camps in the American zones of occupied Germany and Austria. The second is the equally considerable Czechoslovak political, economic, and military support for Jewish settlement in Palestine and, later, the State of Israel until 1950. In contrast

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to the dominant narrative in historiography, a thorough analysis of the two events reveals the limits of the alleged pro-Jewish position of Czechoslova kia and also the largely, purely pragmatic, reasoning on both sides. At the end of the war approximately two hundred thousand Jewish refugees crossed Czechoslovak territory and were received in several special transit camps; from there they were taken to the German or Austrian border so they could reach the American zones of one of these countries. We can usefully distinguish three phases of the flight of Jewish refugees (called the Brihah) across Czechoslova kia: Until the end of June 1946, those Jews had to use forged documents, which, however, were not closely checked by Czechoslovak border guards if the transit was smooth. From July 1946 to the end of February 1947, the Czechoslovak-Polish border crossings were open for Polish Jews. And from March 1947 to April 1948, they had to cross the Polish border illegally, but were still received at the transit camp in Náchod, north Bohemia, and then taken to the Czechoslovak-Austrian border. An analysis of the archive documents related to these negotiations makes clear that the Czechoslovak Ministry of the Interior and Ministry of Foreign Affairs set three preconditions for Czechoslovak assistance in the logistics of the Brihah.29 The first was that no Polish Jewish refugee would remain in Czechoslovak territory. The second was that funding would come from outside, so that the Czechoslovak state would not have to pay for it. (Ultimately, the JDC and UNRRA covered most of the costs.) And the third was that the JDC would work to foster a positive image of Czechoslova kia abroad. Regarding the first point, the Czechoslovak Ministry of the Interior in particular pushed for the establishment of transit camps that would be guarded by Czechoslovak police to prevent any refugees from escaping. From the major transit camp in Náchod, most refugees were sent southwest in guarded trains (mostly cattle cars) to Děvínská Nová Ves, near Bratislava, where special wooden barracks had been built to house them. From there they were transferred to Vienna, only eighty kilometers due west. This complicated route was chosen because the Czechoslovak government did not want the trains to directly enter the American zone in Bavaria. They feared that the Jewish refugees might be counted in the weekly quotas of all expelled Czechoslovak Germans.30 It is evident that the Czechoslovak government misused the Brihah to jockey for a better position in negotiations over the expulsion of its own former citizens.31 On May 19, 1948, only three months after the country’s communist coup, Czechoslovakia was among the first countries to acknowledge de jure the establishment of the State of Israel.32 Even before that, the Czechoslovak government had actively supported the UN Partition Plan, which suggested a two-state

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solution to the conflict between Jews and Arabs in the region. The first postwar president, Edvard Beneš, favored the creation of the Jewish state. Not only did it comport with his idea of a nation-state; it also meant that Israel could serve as a destination for Jews who did not want to “assimilate” with the Czechs.33 Czechoslova kia is also known for providing weapons to the Jewish fighters in the First Arab-Israeli war (1947–49). The substantial number of weapons and missiles, together with intensive training of pi lots, were likely decisive factors in the victory of the supporters of the Jewish state. The Czechoslovak government could sell this weaponry only with the consent of the Soviet Union (which was hoping for a pro-Soviet and communist State of Israel). Nevertheless, the Czechoslovak Ministry of Trade, Ministry of Defense, and local arms factories clearly also took the initiative in providing support to the Zionists. Czechoslova kia could offer such a huge amount of arms because of the supplies left by the Wehrmacht in the former Protectorate and because of the traditionally strong Czech arms industry. Moreover, some of the industry’s export destinations, like those in South America (especially Argentina), which had played a key role before the war, were now off limits because of American influence in the region. The trade between the newly established State of Israel and Czechoslova kia presented an ideal opportunity at just the right moment. Czechoslova kia would be searching for another market anyway, and the transaction brought much-needed hard currency into the Czechoslovak economy. Though Czechoslovakia was selling weapons to Arab countries at this time, the State of Israel, which provided regular payments, was a preferred trade partner.34 Czechoslovak policy toward the State of Israel changed radically in 1951, reflecting changing Soviet policy in the Middle East. From this point the state’s anti-Zionist propaganda was linked with criticisms of capitalism, US foreign policy, and (especially after 1967) colonialism. This anti-Zionist red line in communist policy made all Jews in the country suspect. But this was not the only manifestation of the state’s political stance toward local Jews. Jewish communities, the Jewish Museum of Prague, and Holocaust commemorations were also used and misused in state propaganda. Communist Czechoslova kia was depicted as a nation that did not discriminate against Jews, harbored no antisemitism, was anti-fascist, and cared for its religious communities, despite the state’s secular character. This ideological framework—reflecting Soviet policy toward Israel, the Cold War, and the rise of USSR propaganda in response to international criticism over human rights violations and antisemitism—largely defined the space within which Jewish communities and individuals could, in a very restricted way,

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negotiate their activities. The situation was made even more complicated by regional differences in the state administration and among Jewish institutions and individuals. This was especially true regarding the property of the Jewish communities. There were more than two hundred synagogues and more than four hundred cemeteries in the territory of the Bohemian Lands after the war. Some local authorities did not respect the legal stipulation that synagogues and cemeteries established before 1850 (like all other historic landmarks from before 1850) were to be protected, and they ordered their complete or partial demolition. In other localities, by contrast, some city representatives and communist officials were open to negotiations with the local Jewish representatives, so that the synagogues and cemeteries in those localities were ultimately preserved, and the local administration not only agreed to erect Holocaust memorials (mostly at the local Jewish cemeteries) but also regularly took part in the Holocaust memorial ceremonies.35

The 1950s: The Slánský Trial and the Flourishing of Jewish Communities The early 1950s were characterized by oppression, most notably during the Slánský trial, when state-sanctioned antisemitism became more apparent and the machinery of oppression was turned especially against Jewish communists. Undeniably, communists from Jewish families accounted for an important though minor number of the Czechoslovak Communist Party members. There were several reasons why some Jews embraced communist ideology. Some, like many non-Jews, did so for opportunistic reasons, but a considerable number of Jewish survivors truly believed in communism. They saw it as an ideology that would finally overcome racism, nationalism, and xenophobia—the dire consequences of which they had just experienced in full force. The aim of these Jews, as for many non-Jews, was to prevent a return to the prewar status quo. The disaster caused by Nazism, and Jewish survivors’ personal losses and grief resulting from the genocide, strengthened their belief that a totally new regime should and could be built on the basis of social justice and equal rights. The Prague-born writer, translator, and Shoah survivor Heda Margolius-Kovály (1919–2010), for example, recalls that communist idealists and Holocaust survivors felt an overwhelming need for self-sacrifice and to take responsibility for the whole society.36 There were also other reasons that led Jews to back the communists: the experience of being liberated by the Soviet Army, which was prevalent among Jewish survivors and most other Czechoslovaks, the bravery of many communists in the camps during the war, and also the effective, if false, propaganda

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about social realities in the Soviet Union. In Slovakia an additional argument was important: It was the Slovak communists in par ticular who tried to rescue the idea of Czechoslovakism, which aimed to prevail over local Slovak nationalism. The existence of the pro-Nazi Slovak state during the war meant that many Jews continued, even after the war, to perceive Slovak nationalism as a threat, and they sought an alternative to it. The antisemitic atmosphere prevailing during what later became known as the Slánský trial of 1952 surprised many of those Jewish idealists. Whereas in most cases the events surrounding the trial did not lead them to reject communist ideology, many later became involved in the reform communist movement. The first arrests in connection with what became later the Slánský trial were in 1949. “Cosmopolitism” and “Titoism” were among the most frequent charges against the fourteen defendants, much as they had been during the Hungarian show trial of László Rajk in 1949. In 1951, however, Rudolf Slánský, the general secretary of the Czechoslovak Communist Party and a vice premier, who himself had been involved in many of the earlier trials of political opponents of communism, was also imprisoned, and the rhetoric of the accusations changed. Henceforth, the alleged Zionist conspiracy became the dominant accusation and later also appeared in the fabricated “confessions” of the accused communists.37 Slánský and the thirteen other leading communists were put on trial in what was officially called the “Trial of the Anti-State Conspiracy Centered on Rudolf Slánský.”38 Eleven of the accused were from Jewish families. The chief prosecutor sought to demonstrate the existence of a worldwide Jewish conspiracy led by American Jewish leaders and Israeli statesmen. The alleged conspiracy was said to be using the Israeli diplomatic ser vices, Jewish relief organizations (including the JDC), and a worldwide network of Jewish agents. The defendants, labeled “Trotskyite-Titoist Zionists,” were accused of having worked for imperialist sabotage and espionage ser vices for many years before the war and even of collaborating with the Gestapo. On November 27, eleven of the accused were sentenced to death. They were hanged on December 3, 1952. The Slánský trial became a key symbol of late-Stalinist atrocities and Sovietinspired antisemitism in Eastern Europe. The Slánský trial typically is understood in relation to similar “Fifth Column” trials within the communist parties of Central and Eastern Europe, with the 1949 trial of the Hungarian communist László Rajk as the model. What made the Slánský trial exceptional was its anti-Zionist rhetoric. Traditional interpretations have insisted that this

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anti-Zionist component had been imported to Czechoslova kia by Soviet advisors who allegedly played a key role in orchestrating the trial, including in drafting the accusation and the individual “confessions.” Secret police reports from the archives of the Ministry of Interior and the National Archives in Prague reveal, however, that the anti-Jewish sentiments suffusing the public sphere during the trial resonated among the Czechoslovak population with surprising intensity, thus contradicting the idea that antisemitism was merely a Soviet import.39 The personal papers of two Czechoslovak-born, German-speaking Jewish communist leaders, F. C. Weiskopf and Louis Fürnberg, suggest that the trials should be seen within the context of Czech nationalism and efforts to establish Czech supremacy over Slovak communists.40 The trial was accompanied by a harsh antisemitic campaign in all parts of Czechoslova kia and created a widespread atmosphere of distrust toward Jews. Many Jews were dismissed from their jobs. But although the Slánský trial is seen as the symbol of antisemitism in communist Czechoslova kia (and, indeed, the Eastern bloc as such), it was only the tip of the iceberg. Dozens of other Jews were imprisoned on trumped-up charges. It is useful to distinguish between two quite different groups. The first group of arrested Jews consists of people involved in politics or in senior posts in the state administration or in factories. In May 1953, for instance, another trial took place in which among others Eduard Goldstücker (1913–2000), the first Czechoslovak diplomat sent to Israel and a leading scholar of German literature, was accused of serving as a mediator between Slánský and Israeli politicians in the late 1940s.41 Diplomatic relations between Czechoslova kia and Israel were also worsened by the Czechoslovak imprisonment of Mordecai Oren, a member of the Knesset and a representative of the Mapam party, and Shimon Orenstein, a Tel Aviv businessman. Orenstein was released in 1954; Oren only in 1956. Dozens of people from Jewish families (even if they did not identify with Judaism) in senior positions in factories (all state-owned) were also dismissed from their jobs and imprisoned, often without trial. In many cases those people had been involved in international trade, using their contacts and language skills from their years as refugees. The second group of Jews who ended up in jail for political reasons were from the Jewish religious communities. They felt they had little in common with the accused “non-Jewish Jews” (to use Isaac Deutscher’s term) involved in the Slánský trial. Most of these Jews were members of the communities’ social-welfare departments that had been responsible for distributing financial help and medicine from the JDC, which they had received through the Israeli embassy.42 The first arrests were made in 1954. The last trial was as late as 1957, and included one of the four rabbis of the Bohemian Lands, Bernard Farkaš (1902–91, born

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in Carpathian Ruthenia). Several other of the accused were Jewish migrants. Nobody expected that the people arrested in the spring of 1957 would ultimately be sentenced to prison. Khrushchev’s “secret” speech, which began the deStalinization of Eastern Europe, the Soviet military intervention against the Hungary Revolution, and the Polish October had had a considerable impact, fostering a less politically rigid atmosphere in Czechoslova kia. As the files of the Czechoslovak secret police reveal, Prague chief rabbi Gustav Sicher (1880–1960) and the employees of the Israeli embassy mentioned in early 1957 that this was “no longer the time for any anti-Jewish trial.”43 But the individuals arrested were sentenced to five years on average and were released only with the general amnesty of 1960. They had been sentenced, however, not for their alleged pro-Zionist activities but for alleged black marketeering. The trials of members of the Czechoslovak Jewish communities in the late 1950s again suggest that antisemitism (with a par ticu lar focus on Jewish migrants from eastern parts of Czechoslova kia) was not a Soviet import but was instead deeply rooted in the administration of the Czechoslovak state. Many Czechoslovak Jews were adversely affected by the anti-Jewish atmosphere in the months and even years surrounding the Slánský trial. They lost their jobs or senior positions, and their children faced difficulties getting into university or continuing studies there. Several testimonies remind us, however, that this discrimination derived from multi-pronged suspicions. When called up for compulsory military ser vice in 1951, Pavel Fried, who is mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, was forced to join the special Technical Assistance Battalion (called the PTP in Czech) units of the Czechoslovak People’s Army, which served from 1950 to 1954 for the internment and reeducation through forced labor of young men whom the regime decided were disloyal to the state. In his testimony Fried mentions that there might have been several reasons for this: His family was not only Jewish but also “bourgeois”; he was active in the scouting movement in the postwar years; and he had relatives “in the West.”44 Paradoxically, the 1950s, compared to the 1970s and 1980s, were also a period in which Jewish communities flourished. Irrespective of the anti-Jewish political campaign of the 1950s, interviews, photographs (mostly from private collections), and documents of local Jewish communities offer a vivid picture of a number of flourishing communities in the 1950s and 1960s. One of the reasons is that these were only the first years of the communist regime. The state bureaucracy could not yet control the private lives of its citizens to the extent it did in the 1970s and 1980s, when a sophisticated network of informants in neighborhoods and workplaces was established. Many social habits and customs continued into the early 1950s, including religious rituals and regular attendance

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at churches and synagogues. In the 1950s and 1960s, b’nai mitzvah, like confirmation in the Christian contexts, were frequent and indisputable events among religious Jews in Czechoslova kia. With the postwar baby boom, the 1950s also marked a peak level of children’s engagement in Jewish communities throughout the country. The probability that Jewish children would survive the war had been extremely low, so re-creating a family was one of the chief goals of Holocaust survivors. From 1946 to 1950, the official birth records of the Jewish communities in Prague and the border regions list dozens of newborns each month.45 There was often a substantial age difference between husbands and wives. Many male survivors who had lost their prewar wives and children married younger wives to start new families. Heřman Herškovič from Carpathian Ruthenia, for example, had lost his wife and eight children in the Shoah. He remarried after the war, and with his new wife, also a migrant from Carpathian Ruthenia, he had two children.46 Most of these families conformed to the general demographic trend of having two children on average, but the number of Jewish children born in the second half of the 1940s and the early 1950s enabled a very lively Jewish community life, with dozens of children taking part in performances at Purim and Hanukkah. A 1954 photograph from Děčín (Tetschen), north Bohemia, demonstrates this nicely. Some of the larger communities even had separate services for “Reform” Jews (with most of the native-born Jews) and “Orthodox” Jews. This was a new phenomenon, unknown in Bohemia before the war, and is documented in Ústí nad Labem, Teplice (Teplitz), and Prague. In Prague, Jewish migrants dominated in the Old-New Synagogue. “Czech Jews,” as they called themselves, tended to concentrate in the Jubilee Synagogue on Jeruzalémská Street. This difference had also gender aspects. In the Orthodox families, female members never went to synagogue for the Shabbat ser vice, except on High Holidays, and so most of the year the Old-New Synagogue was attended only by men. This was different at the Jubilee Synagogue, where families with children went to Shabbat ser vices together. Religious Jews from Carpathian Ruthenia and Slovakia also used ingenuity in forming new networks of shohtim and cantors. This enabled them to keep kashrut and to celebrate the Jewish holidays as they had been accustomed to do in their native lands. This was a remarkable development, especially when one takes into account that these customs were almost entirely new to the Bohemian Lands. Throughout the years of communist rule, kosher food and matzot were distributed from Bratislava or directly from Budapest. The only kosher canteens and restaurants in the country were in Prague, Bratislava, and Košice (east Slovakia). From 1955 onward, new kosher restaurants opened also in Mariánské

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Figure 26. Hanukkah celebration in Děčín, 1954. © Private archive of Harry Farkaš.

Lázně (Marienbad) and Carlsbad to attract foreign tourists and gain hard currency. This relatively flourishing religious life was also possible thanks to the four rabbis active in the Bohemian Lands in the 1950s and early 1960s: Gustav Sicher, who became the chief rabbi; the district rabbis for south and north Bohemia Emil Davidovič (mentioned in the introduction to this chapter), and Bernard Farkaš; and Richard Feder (1875–1970) in Brno, the rabbi for Moravia-Silesia.47 After 1960, Feder succeeded Sicher as the chief rabbi. Several communities had no rabbi at all, only cantors, most of whom were migrants from Carpathian Ruthenia or Slovakia. Feder and Sicher, the only chief rabbis of the Bohemian Lands during the communist period, were renowned far beyond the Jewish community. Both were already known for their publications and public activities during the prewar period. What particularly distinguished them was their membership in different Jewish national movements before the war: Feder was one of the few rabbis of the Czech-Jewish movement; Sicher was a member of Mizrachi and

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ran for the Jewish Party.48 Both earned their doctorates in philosophy from the University of Vienna before World War I. Their careers point to the limits of our periodization, which puts more emphasis on external historic events that divide the history of the twentieth century into several short periods. Individual lives, like those of Sicher and Feder, span all of them. Feder’s last rabbinical appointment before the Shoah was in Kolín (c. 60 km east of Prague), where he retired in 1938. He could not know at that time that he was actually only in the middle of his rabbinical career. At the beginning of the war, he tried to orga nize a mass emigration of Jews from Kolín to South America, but this project collapsed. In 1942 he and his large family were deported to Theresienstadt, where he became the key rabbinical authority for the Czech-speaking Jews. His wife died there, and his three children and their families were murdered in Auschwitz or other death camps. He was one of the very few rabbis to survive the Holocaust, spoke Czech, and was a respected spiritual authority, but he was not asked to become the chief rabbi at the end of the war. He continued his work in Kolín. In 1953 he assumed responsibility for the Jewish communities of Moravia and Czech Silesia and moved to Brno. Several of his publications are related to Czech-Jewish history and his experience in Theresienstadt. Sicher managed to immigrate to Palestine in 1939 after serving for more than ten years as a rabbi in the Prague district of Vinohrady, the largest Czechspeaking Jewish community in the Bohemian Lands at the time. In Palestine he led a community of mostly Czechoslovak Jews. In 1946 he was asked to become the chief rabbi of the Bohemian Lands. After a year of hesitation, he decided to move to Prague, which was interpreted as a betrayal of his Zionist ideals by some journalists in Palestine. The fact that he was asked to become the chief rabbi demonstrates that the ideological conflict between Czech-Jewish and Zionist activists had not disappeared with the Holocaust. Sicher’s being called to Prague was most likely related to the appointment of Arnošt Frischer (1887–1954) as head of the Council of Jewish Communities in Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia. Frischer was the last chairman of the Jewish Party before World War II and a devoted Zionist. Sicher was well known as a scholar in Talmudic and biblical studies and for this translation of the Torah into Czech.49 When he died in 1960, Sicher’s place as chief rabbi was taken by Feder, though he stayed in Brno until his death in 1970. Both Sicher and Feder have held unique places in the memories of many Jews and even non-Jews of Czechoslova kia as deeply religious and caring personalities with knowledge of and interest in Czech and European literature and philosophy. Jews born just after the war, in par ticular, fondly recall their meetings

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with these two rabbis. In an interview from 2013, Alice Lutwak, the daughter of Emil Davidovič, still remembered the words of the poem she recited to Gustav Sicher in 1957, at the celebration marking his ten years as chief rabbi: Milý pane rabíne, velký svátek slavíme, deset let jste tady s námi, námi všemi milovaný [. . .] (Dear Rabbi, we are celebrating a great holiday, you have been with us for ten years, loved by all of us).50 Surprisingly, it was mostly Jews from the border regions who attended the Theresienstadt remembrance ceremonies (Terezínská tryzna, called also Kever avot), which have been held annually in September since 1945. At least two buses full

Figure 27. Alice Lutwak, née Davidovič, recites a poem to mark the tenth anniversary of Gustav Sicher’s becoming chief rabbi of Prague, 1957. © Private archive of Alice Lutwak.

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of people from the north Bohemian Jewish communities of Teplice, Liberec (Reichenberg), Ústí nad Labem, and Děčín came regularly to Terezín, though the vast majority of them had never been imprisoned in the ghetto there. Most Carpathian Jews had survived in hiding (primarily in Budapest) or in labor camps after being selected for them in Auschwitz. Věra Herškovič recalls how as a child she looked forward to these trips to Terezín in the 1950s, because she and many other children could play in the fields of sweet corn on the way from the train station to the former crematorium outside Terezín: “All our parents came to cry; we came to make horseplay.”51 The early 1950s were also when most of the local Holocaust memorials were erected. This again does not mean that the Stalinist years were favorable for such activities; it only means that this period, just after the Holocaust, was when survivors felt the greatest need to recall and remember their murdered relatives, friends, and neighbors. Moreover, the Jewish population of Czechoslova kia was still relatively numerous, and the horrors of war were still vivid in the memories of the local administration, thus in many cases they looked on those initiatives with understanding, especially if the wording of the memorials emphasized that the murdered Jews were victims of fascism. At least twenty-eight Holocaust memorials at Jewish cemeteries across the Bohemian Lands are mentioned in issues of Věstník židovské obce náboženské v Praze (The Bulletin of the Jewish Religious Community in Prague) between 1948 and 1957.52 The new legal framework of the communist state meant that the Jewish communities became the focal points of Jewish social life in the 1950s and 1960s, because any political or other Jewish organizations were not allowed. But Jewish families’ efforts to maintain religious traditions were also crucial, especially in families whose parents came from Carpathian Ruthenia or east Slovakia. Malvina (Malke) Hoffmann, the daughter of Moses and Gertrude Adler, who settled in Ústí nad Labem, recalled: “From our childhood we lived in the Jewish milieu because they [our parents] wanted to show us our traditions.” The family kept kosher; on Friday evenings her father and brother went to the prayer hall, while she and her mother prepared the Shabbat dinner. Boys in the community also went to the prayer hall for after-school meetings (called ḥeder by the community members), where the cantor Samuel Landerer taught them Hebrew and prepared them for bar mitzvah. And we had Purim celebrations, Hanukkah celebrations, and many activities, so, for instance, every Saturday evening a different family organized that we called a Sheli-Shabbes.53 . . . It was an evening party after Shabbes. We all came together, and the family which was responsible for

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that evening brought a lot of food, and everyone was chatting, the kids were playing, and our parents were also conversing. . . . Despite the communist regime, we had a very rich Jewish life in Ústí nad Labem.54 The historiography and the memory of native-born Jews (especially from Prague) is, however, dominated by a very different narrative from this one—of postwar households where the Jewish background of one or both parents was a secret. This is especially apparent in the work of sociologist Alena Heitlinger, the daughter of Ota Heitlinger, who was the secretary of the Jewish community in Prague in the 1960s. Alena Heitlinger focused her research in the 1990s on a group of Czech and Slovak Jews born between 1940 and 1960, most of whom she knew through Jewish youth meetings in Prague in the 1960s. She offers many examples of secular Czech Jews who had mostly become aware of their Jewish identity only because other people had identified them as Jews, and who had largely perceived their Jewishness as a stigma in communist society. According to her research, Jewish identity was taboo among many Czechoslovak Jewish families in the 1950s.55 Many kept silent because they feared discrimination against their children; many others, however, did not consider their Jewishness to be important. Most of them had married non-Jewish partners. The dynamics of people’s attitude toward Judaism and Jewishness during their lives and in different situations was also impor tant. Artur Radvanský (né Thüeberger, 1921–2009), born in Radvanice near Moravská Ostrava, grew up in a religious family. He was the only member of his family to survive the Holocaust. In the postwar years he joined the Czechoslovak Union of Anti-Fascist Fighters (Československý svaz protifašistických bojovníků) and worked as a trade unionist. Already in 1946, he gave public talks about the Holocaust. In the mid-1950s, after the birth of his two children, however, he decided to keep his and his wife’s Jewishness a secret: I didn’t raise my children in a religious way. I was afraid that if the Jews were persecuted again my children would suffer. At first my children didn’t notice anything. But when Anička started first grade, she began to wonder why the other children had grandmas and grandpas, but she didn’t. She used to address all old white-haired people that she met as Grandma and Grandpa, and acted very warmly toward them. Old people in Riegrovy Sady [a park in Prague] who knew her were terribly fond of her. My attitude toward this question changed when Anička heard the curse, “You smelly Jew!” at school.56

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In the 1970s and 1980s, Radvanský became a leading organizer of activities for children in the Prague Jewish Community.

The “Golden” 1960s Only in the early part of the 1960s, which Czechs call the “golden sixties,” did the political situation in Czechoslovakia gradually improve for Jews. People who had been arrested—not only those from the social welfare departments, but also dozens of Jewish soldiers who had fought with the British or Americans during the war and many more Jewish opponents of communism—were released from prison. Liberalization was experienced in a variety of ways, including through measures that made it easier to travel abroad. The reopened borders, however, had a double-edged impact on the Jewish communities. Many Jewish families could now visit their relatives abroad for the first time since 1948. JDC officials visited Czechoslova kia several times in the 1960s, and succeeded in distributing some funding for the operational costs of the Jewish communities in Bratislava and Prague.57 The opened borders, however, also had a negative impact on the Jewish communities: Several impor tant leaders of the Jewish communities— including three of the four remaining rabbis in the country and several cantors (among them Samuel Landerer and Leopold Jakubovič)— emigrated from Czechoslova kia at the beginning of the 1960s. By the late 1960s Feder was the only rabbi left in the country. In 1967 Tomáš Šalomon became the new hope of the Prague Jewish community. He began his rabbinical studies in Budapest at the only rabbinical seminary operating in the pro-Soviet countries, and he continued his studies in London. In 1972, however, he decided not to return to Czechoslovakia; thus, after the death of Feder in 1970, Czechoslovakia was without a rabbi.58 The few cantors who remained in the country became key spiritual leaders. All the cantors and rabbis who emigrated during the 1960s had been born in Slovakia or Carpathian Ruthenia and followed the Orthodox rite. Their decision to leave their native land was further influenced by the fact that maintaining an Orthodox way of life in communist Czechoslova kia was unquestionably more difficult than, say, in West Germany, the United States, or Israel. An additional reason for their departure might have been their alienation from the council and the Prague Jewish community, which favored Jews born in the Bohemian Lands in their leadership. This bias reflected both Czech-speaking Jews’ prejudice against the so-called “Eastern Jews” and hasidim and also state pressure on them to conform linguistically and culturally. The Carpathian Jews were also harder hit by the trials against alleged black marketeers in the late

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1950s. Harry Farkaš, the son of Rabbi Bernard Farkaš, recalls that in those years he was often asked to hold the chuppah at the Old-New Synagogue for couples who planned to emigrate. Many of them had been married for years but wanted a religious wedding before leaving the country.59 The situation of Carpathian Jews in the Bohemian Lands improved in the 1960s in at least one respect: It was no longer taboo to speak about Yiddish. In 1959 the Jewish community of Carlsbad, where Carpathian Jews now dominated, celebrated the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Sholem Aleichem (1859–1916), the leading Yiddish writer. Political liberalization created an atmosphere in which Yiddish language and literature could be discussed for the first time since the end of the war. During the first postwar years and up to the late 1950s, Carpathian Jews avoided speaking Yiddish in public, and in most cases even when communicating with their children, so they would not face discrimination (especially because of the proximity of Yiddish to German). In 1961 Věstník devoted a long article (divided into two issues) to the Yiddish language. A short note at the beginning of the piece noted that Yiddish was a language of some Jews from Carpathian Ukraine who had settled in the border regions.60 Several works by Sholem Asch (1880–1957) and Sholem Aleichem were published in Czech in the 1960s, all translated by Jakub Markovič (1916–65), who also prepared a collection of Yiddish short stories entitled Rozinky a mandle (Raisins and Almonds).61 Memorialization of the Shoah, which was never officially taboo and was ubiquitous in the Věstník židovských náboženských obcí v Čechách, na Moravě a na Slovensku (Bulletin of the Jewish Communities in Bohemia, Moravia, and Slovakia), became a topic of public debate by the end of the 1950s. In 1960, a unique Shoah memorial, comprising the names of about 78,000 victims painted on the walls of the Pinkas Synagogue in Prague, was opened as part of the Jewish Museum’s permanent exhibition (since 1950 called the State Jewish Museum). In her letter to the Ministry of Education, Hana Volavková (1904–85), the director of the State Jewish Museum in Prague, used three arguments to get permission to open the memorial. First of all, the memorial could, she claimed, be a Czech parallel to the new memorial to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in Warsaw; second, the memorial in the Pinkas Synagogue was “about the extermination of the Jewish population of the Bohemian Lands, whose destiny was united with that of the Czech nation during the occupation”; and last but not least, the memorial could be used to promote socialist Czechoslova kia to Western European journalists, who would appreciate that the Czechoslovak government supported and allowed such a project.62 The rhetoric of Volavková’s letter nicely encapsulates the framework within which memorializing the Shoah was possible under the communist regime. Jewish victims could be recognized only

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as an appendix to the planned Nazi genocide of Czechs under the Nazi regime, and only so long as the Shoah memorial was also useful to the Czechoslovak state as a propaganda tool abroad.63 Similarly, Volavková’s other achievement— an exhibition of children’s drawings from Theresienstadt that were made under the supervision of Friedl Dicker Brandeis (1898–1944)—was possible only because it represented the “struggle for peace and against fascism.”64 Attempts to create a dignified exhibition about the experience of the Jews in the Theresienstadt ghetto, however, were largely unsuccessful.65 Several other initiatives from the 1960s brought the Jewish Museum increased attention from the international mass media. But none of these was connected with Volavková, who left the museum in 1961. Without her, the museum lost a unique art historian and manager who had cultivated close relationships with top Czech artists and art scholars. It was also only after she left, in 1964, that more than fifteen hundred Torah scrolls from the Jewish communities of Bohemia and Moravia were sold by the Czechoslovak government to the Westminster Synagogue in England.66 Volavková had opposed this transaction for several years because she understood the Torah scrolls to be important components of the museum’s collection, and she was planning an exhibition devoted to them. The story of the sale of the Bohemian and Moravian Torah scrolls, however, made a remarkable contribution to the transnational networks of Jewish communities and Czechoslova kia. After restoration, those Torah scrolls were distributed among Jewish communities in Great Britain and the United States. Since the 1990s, representatives of these American and British Jewish congregations have tried to discover more information about the communities from which their Torah scrolls originated. The sales thus led to important institutional and individual contacts with Jews and non-Jews in Bohemian and Moravian localities. Vilém Benda (né Bondy, 1916–70), who replaced Volavková as director of the State Jewish Museum, lacked her extraordinary knowledge and respect for the museum’s collections. Nevertheless, he sought to promote the museum’s activities by means of several more exhibitions for tourists and was especially concerned to promote the museum’s activities abroad. Thus in 1965 he established the journal Judaica Bohemiae, which thereafter has published articles in Russian, German, French, and later in English, but never in Czech. The 1960s were also crucial years, as both the Holocaust and Prague German literature, especially its most important embodiment, Franz Kafka, became topics of intellectual debate and reference points in the criticism of Stalinism and the communist regime in general. The first Czechoslovak film on the Holocaust, Daleká cesta (Distant Journey), by Alfréd Radok (1914–76), dates from 1949, but from 1959 onward more than a dozen other films followed. Most of

Figure 28. František Kraus points to a wall of the Pinkas Synagogue, where, among the names of Czechoslovaks murdered in the Shoah, are those of his relatives, undated. © Jewish Museum in Prague.

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the 1960s films were adaptations of Arnošt Lustig (1926–2011) novels and short stories. In 1963, Kafka’s work was finally publicly discussed among Czechoslovak academics, at a conference in the Baroque manor house in Liblice (about 40 kilometers north of Prague). This meeting had a far-reaching impact on debates about censorship and criticism of the Stalinist years. Eduard Goldstücker, who had been imprisoned, tried, and nearly put to death in the early 1950s, was a co-organizer of the conference. In 1963 he began to “frame his own past in terms borrowed from Kafka’s Trial.”67 In contrast to French or West German readers, who saw Kafka’s motifs as symbols, Czechs were reading him with reference to their everyday lives.68 The same applies to films about the Holocaust. As with Kafka—especially his Trial—Holocaust films also enabled directors “to make obliquely critical statements about the repressive nature of the regimes they lived and worked under.”69 As with the Liblice conference, which was initiated by communists from Jewish families, most of the Czechoslovak Holocaust films were also directed and written by people from Jewish families for whom Kafka and the Holocaust were important personal topics. Moreover, films about the Holocaust stood a good chance of being taken seriously in the West in the 1960s.70 The Shop on Main Street (1965), directed by Ján Kadár and Elmar Klos, received an Oscar for the year’s best foreign film.71 A unique tragicomedy of an employee in a crematorium who became a tool of evil, The Cremator (1967) was directed by Juraj Herz and based on a novel by Ladislav Fuks. To this day many of these films have continued to be appreciated for their creativity and new perspectives, especially because the arts in 1960s Czechoslovakia were anything but politically engaged. Unlike the case in the 1950s, artists during this period enjoyed and appreciated the opportunity to create artistically high-quality films without feeling a need to make a political statement.72 The 1960s were—as throughout Europe, and not only in the Jewish context— important for the youth movement of people born after the war. In Prague the lectures organized by the Prague Jewish Community attracted dozens of young people whose parents had rarely even mentioned their Jewish roots to them. For many of these young Jews (mostly university students, but also some still in secondary school) who attended the lectures on Jewish culture, religion, and history, this was their first opportunity to meet other Jews and discuss their often only recently discovered Jewishness. They called themselves the “children of Maislovka,” after the Prague street where their meetings were held in the Jewish town hall. Many were grateful for the opportunity to discuss Jewish topics openly, and they saw this group as the extended family they other wise lacked.73 By contrast, the numerous young Jews from the border regions did not need to rediscover their Jewish identity, since they were brought up in openly

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Jewish households and had dense networks of friends from other Jewish families (in addition to non-Jewish friends and neighbors). In the Jewish communities in the border regions (and Slovakia), youth activities were thus a natural extension of the community life in which their parents were active. The late 1950s and 1960s were also years when the Jewish community of Prague was visited by several well-known non-Jewish figures from the arts and entertainment world. Top pop-music stars—like Arnošt Kavka, a leading swing singer, Karel Vlach, a famous dance orchestra conductor, and Ljuba Hermanová, known also from the Osvobozené divadlo (Liberated Theater), an avant-garde theater that Jan Werich and Jiří Voskovec had helped to establish in the mid-1920s—were guests of the Jewish community celebrations for Purim and Hanukkah. Most of them came at the invitation of František R. Kraus (1903–67), who had worked in Czechoslovak radio and the Czechoslovak Telegraphic Agency in the 1920s and 1930s, and thus knew most of the artists personally. These performers were willing to come to the Jewish community not only out of their friendship with Kraus but often also because of their empathy for a community that had suffered during the war; others did so due to their close relationships with Jewish friends and colleagues. Some also appeared at these events because they were not allowed to perform at official, state-supported concerts at that time.74 Karel Gott (1939–2019), a rising star of Czech pop music, sang at a Hanukkah party thrown by the Prague Jewish community (attended by a busload of Jewish youth from the border regions),75 and his LP with the Jewish song “Eli, Eli” (1965) became very popu lar among Czechoslovak Jews. In April 1968 an exhibition marking a millennium of Jewish settlement in the Bohemian Lands was held at the Jewish Town Hall in Prague. Jan Werich (1905–80), the renowned Czech actor and writer known especially for his work with the Osvobozené divadlo, opened the exhibition with a speech against antisemitism that was based on Jean-Paul Sartre’s essay Réflexions sur la question juive (1946). In the speech Werich emphatically opposed the idea that the State of Israel could be called an aggressor if it was fighting for its mere existence.76 Delivered ten months after the Six-Day War, his speech was also understood as an important statement opposing the Czechoslovak regime’s condemnation of the State of Israel. It’s helpful to interpret the antisemitism of Czechoslovak political discourse of the late 1950s and in the 1960s in comparison to the situation in Poland during the same period. Among Czechs the antisemitism of the early 1950s (witnessed especially during the Slánský trial) was widely criticized during the Prague Spring of 1968 as reflecting the Stalinist Soviet totalitarian regime, which was meant to give way to Czechoslovak reform communism (what Alexander

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Dubček called “socialism with a human face”). In Poland, in contrast, the early 1950s were criticized during the Thaw of 1956 as years of Stalinist communism, when politicians from Jewish families were alleged to hold too much influence (in keeping with the myth of Żydokomuna, Judeo-communism), and the call for a Polish version of communism included sanctioning antisemitism in the political discourse. As a result, thousands of Jews emigrated from Poland in 1956 (in what became known as the “Gomułka Aliyah”).77 This comparison can be usefully made all the way into the late 1960s, when the Six-Day War in 1967 led to a considerable deterioration in conditions for Jews in Soviet bloc countries. The Czechoslovak government adhered to Soviet rhetoric in condemning Israel’s alleged aggressions. But the Six-Day War became a key topic of the Congress of Czechoslovak Writers that same year, during which several leading Czechoslovak writers expressed their sympathies with Israel. The erstwhile Stalinist playwright and later dissident Pavel Kohout (b. 1928) even compared Israel’s situation to that of Czechoslova kia after the 1938 Munich Agreement. Literární noviny (Literature News), the leading weekly of the communist reform movement, also published an interview with the prominent Czech writers Arnošt Lustig (1926–2011), Ivan Klíma, (b. 1931) and Jan Procházka (1929–71) in which they all criticized the government’s anti-Israel politics.78 Ladislav Mňačko (1919–94), a non-Jewish Slovak writer and journalist who had been a devoted communist in the early 1950s, also protested the anti-Israel policy of the Czechoslovak Communist Party and Czechoslovakia’s severing of diplomatic relations with the State of Israel in 1967. He left for Israel in protest and claimed, in an interview in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, that Prague’s policy toward Israel was “an unfair remnant of the spirit and methods of the 1950s, and proof that things had not, indeed could not, change significantly as long as those responsible for the injustices of the 1950s were still in power.”79 For this he was stripped of his Czechoslovak citizenship. He went into exile in Austria after the Soviet-led military intervention August 21, 1968. Because of the Six-Day War, most of the events planned to mark the thousandth anniversary of Jewish settlement in the Bohemian Lands, which would have been attended by many Jewish visitors from around the world, were canceled. After the Soviet-led military intervention in August, anti-Zionist propaganda came to a head, and some of the articles were used to attack the entire communist reform movement, claiming or suggesting that it had been orchestrated by the Zionists. The fact that one of the leading reformists, František Kriegel (1908–79), who came from a Jewish family, was the only member of the presidium of the Central Committee of the Czechoslovak Communist Party who refused to sign the “Moscow Protocol” (a document expressing approval for the

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Soviet-led occupation of Czechoslova kia in August 1968) was also distorted for anti-Zionist propagandistic arguments made by Czechoslovak political leaders.80 All these factors—Werich’s speech; the sympathies for Israel and the Jewish community expressed by other leading figures in the arts in the Bohemian Lands; the explicitly pro-Israel statements of several reform communist writers and journalists; and Kriegel’s brave refusal to sign the Moscow Protocol— contributed to the notion shared by many Jews as well as non-Jewish intellectuals and reform communists that the line between those who were anti-democratization and pro-Soviet in opposition to the reform communists was the same division that existed between those spreading antisemitism and anti-Zionism and those who were pro-Israel and opposed to antisemitism. The situation in Czechoslova kia was therefore far less complicated than in Poland, where political opposition to the communist regime was deeply divided in its attitude toward the Jews. Polish Jews often avoided the Polish non-Jewish exile community which was in majority nationalist and antisemitic. In contrast, Jews who left Czechoslova kia in the 1960s were mostly well integrated into the Czechoslovak community of political emigrants in Western Europe and the United States and were more likely to reestablish close contacts with Jewish and non-Jewish individuals and communities in Czechoslovakia after the democratic changes of 1989–90 than was the case in Poland.

1970s and 1980s: “Normalization” In late August 1968 Warsaw Pact military forces intervened in Czechoslova kia, putting an end to the reform communist movement. Even if political change was not felt immediately, the worsening situation of Jews was quick. In the early 1970s the Jewish population of Czechoslova kia was hit hard by aggressive antiZionist communist propaganda that linked Zionism to fascism and colonialism.81 In 1971 the secret police (StB) began systematically to persecute people from Jewish families, especially those who had supported the reform movement. The operation, named “Pavouk” (Spider), involved about twenty thousand people, regardless of whether they felt an attachment to Judaism or not. Dozens of Jewish intellectuals, including the writer and future chief rabbi of Prague, Karol Sidon (b. 1942), were forced to emigrate. Soon after the August 1968 invasion, the Holocaust memorial in the Pinkas Synagogue was closed to the public. The reason given was water damage, but the memorial was not repaired and reopened until 1995. It is often argued that the 1970s and early 1980s in Czechoslova kia—the years of the restoration of hardline communist rule (which the regime called

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“normalization”)—were far less restrictive than the Stalinist years. Focusing on the Jewish community provides another perspective. In the 1950s several Jewish communities in Prague, the Bohemian border regions, and Moravia were lively centers of religious life, with regular ser vices and activities for adults and children. The 1950s were, despite the restrictions and repression, still years in which prayer halls were full, and other religious institutions in the country enjoyed wide popularity. The decline of Jewish religious life in the 1970s and early 1980s was caused by the emigration of half the Jewish population, which left only about twelve thousand Jews in the country.82 A parallel development in Christian churches, where membership dropped radically after 1970, reminds us, however, that emigration was not the only cause of the dramatic decline of Jewish religious life in Czechoslova kia. In the 1950s the revival of the Jewish communities took place amid communist intimidation, but the newly restrictive politics instituted after the Soviet-led intervention in 1968 hit the already exhausted institutions hard. Moreover, the new leaders of the Jewish communities—like those of Protestant and Catholic congregations—were required to denounce the party-led reform movement of the period before August 1968 and to express their approval of Soviet-led “fraternal assistance.” The expression of loyalty to the Communist Party also became central to the vettings (prověrky), carried out at all workplaces and universities, which had to be signed by every individual. Attendance at Sunday or Shabbat ser vices became an obstacle to a professional career or university matriculation. Many people decided against taking the risk, fearing that it would endanger their or their children’s prospects. Although Jewish congregations often faced the difficulty of constituting a minyan, the quorum of ten men over the age of thirteen, the continuity of basic religious life in the 1970s was ensured in the Bohemian Lands nearly exclusively through the participation of Jewish men from Carpathian Ruthenia and Slovakia. For them, maintaining the religious traditions of their forefathers was important, regardless of the political situation and despite the well-known fact that the Jewish communities (like their Christian counterparts) were spied on by the secret police. In Děčín, the Markovič family played a key role in the survival of their town’s Jewish community. In Ústí nad Labem, it was the Herškovič family. And, up until the 1990s, the leading figure of religious life in the Prague Jewish community was Cantor Victor Feuerlicht (1918–2003), who had been born in Mukachevo. Ladislav Moše Blum (1911–94), who served as cantor in the Jubilee synagogue in Jerusalem Street, was born in eastern Slovakia and well known for his extraordinary singing abilities and knowledge of unique Eastern European niggunim (melodies).83

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The Helsinki Accords of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe, signed in 1975 by most European countries, including those of the Soviet bloc, allowed the JDC to renew its activities in Czechoslova kia, Hungary, and Poland beginning in 1981. Whereas in Poland the JDC could immediately start programs for Jewish youth and provide support for secular Jewish cultural events and publications, in Czechoslova kia the organization’s activities were strictly limited. The JDC could finance only religious activities and provide support to the ill, the elderly, and community officials.84 It was banned from supporting Jewish youth in any way. The reports of the JDC from Czechoslova kia repeatedly mention that no youth activities could be financed and that the state administration was very sensitive when it came to this question. The JDC could bring religious items, like taleisim and yarmulkes, into the country. And an important part of its budget consisted of support for three kosher kitchens (in Prague, Bratislava, and Košice), which also became important social centers for people who did not attend synagogue. In 1987 the JDC brought two thousand copies of a Hebrew-Czech prayer book into the country, but otherwise the Czechoslovak regime permitted no outside support for any publications on Jewish topics. These restrictions were also reflected in the negotiations over a book by Leo Pavlát (b. 1950), who was an editor at the Albatros publishing house at that time. (Since 1994 he has been the director of the Jewish Museum in Prague.) The book comprised traditional Jewish fairy tales and other stories that Pavlát had compiled in 1982. Desider Galský (1921–90), the head of the Council of Jewish Communities in Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia, asked the JDC for funding to publish this politically neutral book. Eventually, the Czechoslovak authorities allowed the publication, but only in English, German, and French, not in Czech. The book was distributed from Great Britain, and Galský then asked the JDC for extra money to buy at least two hundred copies for distribution among Jews in Prague. In 1987 the same book, under the title Osm světel (Eight Lights), was published in Czech samizdat. This is a superb illustration, first, of all the absurdity of Czechoslovak policy that anxiously opposed any activity not directly connected with religious practice and, second, of the government’s attempts to use Jewish community activities to improve its image abroad. It also casts doubt on the widespread notion that there was a clear-cut division between official and dissident circles. In 1985 Galský was forced to resign his position as the head of the council, though he could remain as a member. The new president, Bohumil Heller, was ready to work more closely with the state administration. In reporting on this change in leadership, Diane Rosenbaum, the JDC program manager in Czechoslova kia, expressed regret at Galský’s resignation, citing in par ticular his use of JDC funding to support a small group of young people who were interested in

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Judaism and maintained regular contact with the Prague cantor Victor Feuerlicht. In the end Galský received special grants even after 1985, in his capacity as a frequent representative of the Czechoslovak Jewish community at various anti-fascist meetings on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Galský had fought in the Slovak National Uprising in 1944, knew several languages, and, thanks to his work for the Czechoslovak Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the immediate postwar period, had contacts all over Europe. In his obituary of Galský, Tomáš Pěkný, a Jewish dissident who was responsible for the Sefer series of samizdat on Jewish topics, mentions that he had regularly received funding from Galský for the samizdat throughout the 1980s.85 It was not only the Jewish dissidents who were active in publishing Jewish literature and organizing cultural events, including Purim theater performances and concerts of the Mišpacha choir. The documents of the Prague Jewish community reveal that, at Feuerlicht’s invitation, Hana Hegerová, born in 1931 into a Slovak Jewish family and widely considered the “queen of Czechoslovak chanson,” sang at Hanukkah and Purim parties several times in the 1970s. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s the Židovská ročenka (Jewish Annual), published by the council since 1953, was also generally seen as a unique source of valuable articles on Jewish literature and religion far beyond the Jewish communities. In 1984 Daniel Mayer, who had just finished his studies at the rabbinical seminary in Budapest, was appointed rabbi of the Prague Jewish community and initiated regular classes of Jewish children. From the early 1970s on, Artur Radvanský had organized Saturday meetings for children of between five and fifteen years of age once every two weeks. The program was initially focused on having a good time together. For group reading material, Radvanský preferred texts on CzechJewish symbiosis; only later came the topic of the Holocaust: “I met with them on Saturday once every fourteen days, we’d play ping-pong, tell fairy tales, I read to them from ‘Modche and Rezi’ by Vojtěch Rakous as well as passages written by the Kolín rabbi Feder for Czech youth magazines. The children liked it very much. I gradually began to tell them about the concentration camps.”86 Together with Michaela Vidláková, and with the regime turning a blind eye, Radvanský also organized summer camps for Jewish children. Another impor tant initiative was undertaken by Vida Neuwirthová who since 1980s has put a children’s group together at the Jewish community in Prague which prepared theatre performances for Purim and Hanukkah. Dozens of the signatories of the Charter 77 declaration, which called for the government to respect the human rights as outlined in the Helsinki Accords from 1975 (signed also by Czechoslova kia), were from Jewish families and were well integrated into the dissident community. A few dissidents even converted to Judaism to protest the communists’ oppression of the Jewish community. In

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April 1989 the charter signatories issued a document stating that the Jewish minority of Czechoslova kia had been attacked several times and had nearly been wiped out—not only during the war time genocide but also in the postwar period, by the neglect of Jewish landmarks and by suppression of the memory of the Shoah, especially in textbooks. At the end of the document, they asked whether all this did not demonstrate the state’s politically motivated antisemitism.87 The detailed reply of the Council of Jewish Communities in Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia, which was most probably coerced by the police, is remarkable. The council agreed that most of the information about the disastrous situation of the Jewish communities and the lack of education about the Holocaust in Czechoslova kia were incontestable facts; the only part of the reply that the authors from the council did not agree with was the allegation of official state antisemitism, mentioned at the end of the document.88 The late 1970s and especially the 1980s were also years when some nonJewish Czechs became aware of neglected Jewish monuments all around the country and began to devote their free time to the documentation of Jewish heritage. The first among them was Jiří Fiedler (1935–2014), an editor at the Albatros publishing house who shared an office with Leo Pavlát. He tirelessly photographed Jewish cemeteries and synagogues throughout the countryside and tried to find more information about those landmarks. His unique collection, built on decades of tireless work, became the basis for his encyclopedia of Jewish monuments in the Bohemian Lands and of a large on-going project about the history of Jewish communities there.89 In the 1980s Arno Pařík (b. 1948), an art historian from the Jewish Museum, often joined Fiedler on his trips to the countryside.90 Another person who in the 1970s and 1980s published frequently on Jewish topics in local magazines and newspapers was Jaroslav Bránský (1928–2017), a Czech language and literature teacher at the secondary school in Boskovice, south Moravia. Though not a Jew, he was born in 1928 in the Jewish quarter there, and spent his free time reading about the local Jewish community and bringing the stories and achievements of its Jewish citizens to the attention of the locals.91

1989 and More Transnational Networks In December 1989, only a few months after the charter document about communist oppression of Jews and Judaism was issued, Václav Havel (1936–2011) was elected president of Czechoslova kia. The country then became one of the first post-communist states to reestablish diplomatic relations with the State of Israel. An exceptionally positive relationship between the Czechoslovak (and, later, Czech) government and representatives of the Jewish communities, as well

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as the largely uncritical Czech support for the Israeli government, have become constants of the country’s policy and diplomacy. Only two weeks after the student demonstration of November 17, 1989, which initiated the end of the communist regime in Czechoslova kia, a healthy majority reelected Galský president of the council. But this time young dissidents also became members. Rabbi Daniel Mayer was forced to quit in 1990 because he had collaborated with the secret police in the 1980s (which had been a precondition for his being granted the job). In 1992 Karol Sidon returned from rabbinical studies in Germany and Israel to become the chief rabbi of Prague. Since some of the dissidents, including Sidon, had converted to Judaism in the 1970s (because, like Sidon, only their fathers were Jewish or because they had no Jewish parent), Orthodox Judaism became their preferred practice. This created a unique situation in the 1990s when, for the first time in its history, the leaders of the council and of the Prague Jewish community—who were, again, Jews born to local Czech-speaking families—worked closely with the few remaining Orthodox Jews from Carpathian Ukraine, especially with Victor Feuerlicht and Mikuláš/Miki Roth (1908–2000), both of whom were cantors. The harmony in Prague was short-lived. An internal conflict, reported by many Czech, American, and German dailies, erupted in 2004 and 2005. Many observers understood it as a personal conflict or a conflict over the considerable real estate returned to the Prague Jewish community under recent legislation on restitution. But the core of the conflict was the resistance of the leadership— now in the hands of the former dissidents—to admit other forms of Judaism. To the present day, the Prague Jewish community is the most Orthodox in the Czech Republic (the country that was established on January 1, 1993, after the dissolution of Czechoslova kia). The Orthodox character of many of the borderland communities is, in contrast, fading away—a phenomenon related to the disappearance of the first generation of Holocaust survivors who had been raised in Slovakia or Carpathian Ruthenia. The changed religious map of the Czech Republic is manifested in the different definitions of membership within the individual Jewish communities. The statutes of the Federation of Jewish Communities from 2013 established three criteria for acquiring membership in the individual Jewish communities. Membership required meeting a single criterion among the three: having a Jewish mother according to Halakhah (the body of Jewish laws); having either a mother or father who was a Halakhic Jew; or having one grandparent who was a Halakhic Jew. In the Czech Republic today, only the Prague Jewish community follows the first, strictest, definition, and grants full membership only to individuals whose Jewish mother is, or was, Jewish according to Halakhah or who personally converted to Judaism according to Halakhah. In the three Moravian and Silesian

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communities, in Olomouc, Brno, and Ostrava, the statutes define a possible member as someone who has at least one Jewish grandparent according to Halakhah, or someone who has converted to Judaism according to Halakhah. The community in Pilsen allows someone whose one parent was “provably” a Jew or who converted to be a member. The Liberal Jewish Union in the Czech Republic requires either a Jewish parent or a Jewish grandmother on the mother’s side. These varying criteria in defining membership in the Jewish communities would have been unacceptable before World War II. It is a lasting consequence of the Shoah. With the assistance of the JDC, whose agenda included support for the alternative religious traditions, and with the help of transnational networks of Jewish youth organizations and religious movements, the institutional framework has become more diverse. The Lauder Foundation has played a key role in the reestablishment of Jewish education. The success of the primary and secondary schools run by the foundation in Prague also demonstrates that the network of people who feel no affiliation to the religious community yet have a sense of Jewish identity is surprisingly large in the Czech Republic. The democratic framework also enabled the creation or development of several cultural and academic centers focusing on Jewish history and art. Most tourists visit the Jewish Museum in Prague, which was returned to the Jewish community and has become the most visited museum in the Czech Republic. One of the first goals of the new leadership was to renovate the buildings (mostly synagogues) that belong to the museum and to prepare new permanent exhibitions. The museum has also made its library and archive more accessible to researchers and the general public, and it organizes lectures and concerts. In 2006 it opened a branch in Brno. The Terezín Memorial, in the town of Terezín, is another research and educational institution with a focus on the commemoration of the Holocaust. The first exhibition about the ghetto period opened in 1991. Hundreds of thousands of Czech students have toured this memorial as part of their secondary school education. The Terezín Initiative Institute (Institut Terezínské iniciativy) was also established in 1991 as a research institute of the Terezín Initiative (Terezínská iniciativa), an association founded by former prisoners of the ghetto. The first director was (until his death in 2001) Miroslav Kárný, a Holocaust survivor, historian, and ardent communist already before World War II. In the 1970s and 1980s, Kárný published several articles about the Theresienstadt ghetto in Judaica Bohemiae. With generous funding from the German government, the Terezín Initiative Institute became the center of Holocaust research in Czechoslova kia (and later the Czech Republic), holding annual international

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conferences in Terezín and publishing the academic journal Terezínské studie a dokumenty/Theresienstädter Studien und Dokumente from 1994 to 2004. Though research activities have recently ceased to be at the center of its work, the institute still plays an impor tant role in commemorating the Holocaust and in educational activities for students and teachers. The institute’s tradition of reading the names of Jewish and, since 2014, Romani victims of the Holocaust on one of the central squares in Prague on Yom ha-Shoah has spread to another twentyone Bohemian and Moravian towns. The inclusion of Romani victims in commemorations of the Holocaust was first made explicit at an international conference organized by President Václav Havel at the Prague Castle in October 1999, to which for the first time not only Jewish but also Romani survivors and scholars were invited. Called “The Holocaust Phenomenon,” the conference was also a political statement that the Czech Republic was aware of the importance of commemorating the victims of the largest European genocide and was therefore ready to become a member of the European Union. As the historian Tony Judt aptly put it, whereas Heinrich Heine claimed that baptism was the entry ticket to the Europe of the nineteenth century, acknowledgment of the Holocaust became the entry ticket to Europe in the 1990s and beyond.92 The Shoah was finally recognized by the political and academic elites of the Czech Republic as an undeniable fact because “to deny or belittle the Shoah—the Holocaust—is to place yourself beyond the pale of civilized public discourse.”93 But this logic did not apply to acknowledgement of the genocide of the Roma, which in the Czech Republic—as in many other European countries—is still denied by a considerable number of politicians and other public authorities. This also mirrors the continuing everyday discrimination against Roma in the Czech Republic and beyond. The membership of the Czech Republic in the European Union since 2004 has considerably improved the situation of marginalized groups of people. The importance of this European framework (including the European Supreme Court) for the Czech Republic has become even more obvious recently, when a large part of the Czech political elite has ignored the European Union’s values of democracy, equal rights, and dignity for marginalized people. The European Union also enabled, by means of generous subsidies, the reconstruction of cultural heritage in many places in the country. In the Jewish context, the Revitalization of Jewish Historical Buildings in the Czech Republic project has made possible the complete renovation of synagogues, houses of rabbis, and former Jewish schools in ten localities.94 The reconstruction of the Baroque synagogue in Mikulov, the only Polish-style synagogue in the country, is especially noteworthy. It is the same synagogue Abraham Levie visited in 1719 and admired

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how it was filled with mostly Polish students.95 Thanks to this and other renovation projects, Jewish sites have become integral parts of the cultural heritage in dozens of localities outside Prague. How many Jews are there in the Czech Republic today? Trying to answer this apparently simple question begins to reveal the complexity of the current situation of Jews in the country, reflecting the shifting categories and concepts of nationality, “ethnicity,” and religion. According to the statistics of the Federation of Jewish Communities in the Czech Republic, about three thousand people are registered in one of the ten Jewish communities. (Of this number, 1,500 are in Prague.) There is a general consensus, however, that the number of people who identify somehow with Judaism is much larger. The federation, for example, estimates the number to be between 15,000 and 20,000.96 In contrast to the interwar period, when there was pressure from the state administration to make national identification explicit (at least during the censuses, which forced everybody to choose only one nationality), in contrast to the racist laws during the German occupation, and also in contrast to the communist period, with its pressure to assimilate linguistically and nationally to the Czech nation, a plurality of national and cultural identities has become a widely accepted norm since the 1990s. In the last census of the Czech Republic, in 2011, not only was plurality of nationalities accepted (for example, Czech and European, or more), but people were also encouraged to choose a regional identity. The option not to choose any nationality was used by more than two and a half million people out of ten million. And people were not choosing from the list of religious groups provided in the census. Only two million people declared themselves to be “believers.” The fifth largest “religious” group—after Roman Catholics, two Protestant churches, and the Russian Orthodox—were the “Jedi,” with some 15, 000 people who had in jest registered as followers of the Star Wars heroes. Only 1,132 citizens claimed to be members of the Jewish community in that census.97 In 2012 a young member of the Jewish community was our guide when a group of New York University students visited the Jewish Museum in Prague. In discussion with the students, he mentioned that he too had declared himself a Jedi in the 2011 census. One of the American Jewish students was particularly furious. How could he deny his Jewishness? How could he lie for the statistics? Wasn’t it a fraud? More than seventy years after the Shoah, the definition of a Jew seems more complex than ever. The Shoah nearly wiped out the Jews of Europe. The number of people who feel an attachment to Judaism today is growing, however, for various reasons, and even a distant Jewish ancestor can awaken an interest in

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Jewishness. On the other hand, the weakening of the nationalist definition of a state in which most citizens are professed atheists, and the impact of global mass media and global migration, help to foster the perception of Judaism as only one of many personal identifications. The distinction between Jews and non-Jews, which has never been absolute, is in this Central European region blurred more than ever.

App end i x

The Demographic Development of Jewish Settlement in Selected Communities in the Bohemian Lands Helena Klímová and Lenka Matušíková

From the early modern period to the present day, Jewish settlement in Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia has experienced dramatic changes. Many Jewish communities in feudal cities (e.g., Mladá Boleslav, Hroznětín, Polná, Boskovice, Mikulov) grew and gained importance over the course of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, when Jews expelled from the major cities and often refugees from surrounding lands settled there. There was a marked change in the demographic development of these Jewish communities after 1848, in connection with the relaxation of all discriminatory measures that limited the free movement of Jews within the Habsburg monarchy. The Jewish communities in the countryside gradually became depopulated as their population moved to the major towns and cities. In the period 1890–95, the boundaries of the Jewish religious communities were redefined and reset by law in Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia. Several small communities disappeared or were absorbed into larger Jewish communities in the locality. In the interwar period, too, the number of rural communities decreased.1 On the other hand, in the second half of the nineteenth century, Jewish communities were established or renewed in towns in which Jews had been forbidden to reside until 1848 (e.g., České Budějovice, Carlsbad, Brno, Moravská Ostrava). Jews moved to larger towns and cities and to developing industrial centers mainly for financial and economic reasons. Jewish entrepreneurs and tradesmen, and also lawyers, doctors, and teachers, played significant roles in the economic development and cultural life of these cities. Prague was the only

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city with continuous and significant Jewish settlement, and it was in this respect exceptional in the whole Central European region. In an effort to capture at least partially the development of Jewish settlement in the Bohemian Lands in the period with which the book Prague and Beyond is concerned, we chose, in consultation with the editors of the book, twentythree Jewish communities. The data we gathered demonstrate some general trends in this development. The choice was based on the following criteria: the importance of the community in at least one of the centuries studied; the proportionate representation of the communities in Bohemia and Moravia; and the geographical disposition of the communities on the map. Silesia is represented by two communities—Opava and Osoblaha; in the nineteenth century, however, Osoblaha legally belonged to Moravia. In the course of gathering data for the first two chapters (1500–1800), we primarily used official statistical sources: the Bohemian and Moravian cadastres (for Bohemia, the Roll of Assessment and the Theresian cadastre; for Moravia, the cadastral registers and the Theresian cadastre), lists of Jews (seventeenth and eighteenth centuries), and records of Familianten (men qualified to start a family). These archival sources present the numbers of Jews in different units (as families, without detailed information about their size; as householders, owners of houses, or heads of households; as houses, without mentioning the number of people living there; as the number of males in the population). It is exceptional for all the persons living in one shared household, including relations and servants, to be given in the lists. From the middle of the eighteenth century, changes in the Jewish population in various official conscriptions can also be followed. As the Familiants Laws were applied, the numbers of permitted families were established for individual communities, and this was given in the official list. On the basis of these sources, imprecise estimates about the size of the Jewish population emerged. In fact, the stated numbers were very often exceeded, and a number of Jewish families lived in the communities without official approval. In following the demographic development of Jewish settlement, one has to take into consideration the greater migration of Jews (Jewish families) at times of martial conflicts; as a consequence of the residence ban in mining towns and royal cities; and resulting from expulsion from large cities. In communities where Jews settled for economic reasons or after expulsion, they were registered as “foreign Jews” or “foreign Familianten.” An example of this is the movement of Jews in the eighteenth and at the beginning of the nineteenth century from overpopulated communities in Moravia to Upper Hungary (western Slovakia). In the lists, however, “foreign Jews” remained members of their home communities and were included in their census. In many cases they were registered twice.

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More reliable data are provided by the censuses held regularly from 1857 onward and published in experts’ essays and statistical lexicons. Up to the interwar period, some Moravian communities operated on a specific system whereby they were often divided into two politically and administratively independent communities: “Jewish” and “Christian.” In the second half of the nineteenth century, Christians and Jews could, according to their discretion, settle in these towns without regard to their religious faith. In the model of communities in our selection, this applied to Mikulov, Boskovice, Třebíč, Lipník nad Bečvou, Prostějov, Holešov, and Uherský Brod. For the years 1880–1910, we list in the tables related to these communities the numbers of Jews in the Jewish part of the community and in the Christian part separately. The inner migration of Jews from the Jewish to the Christian part of the town can thus be clearly compared. Our starting point here is an analysis by Ines Koeltzsch.2 In the census of 1921, we present the number of Jews for both parts of the town again, although many had not yet been merged.3 The censuses of 1921 and 1930 were distinguished by the fact that Jews could declare themselves followers of the Jewish faith and also claim Jewish nationality. The number of people of Jewish religion always indicates all such people present in the town during the census (regardless of whether they were Czechoslovak citizens). The number of those of Jewish nationality is always smaller than the number of those of Jewish faith. One can observe, however, significant regional discrepancies. In predominantly Czech-language small cities in Bohemia, including Kolín, Polná, and Tábor, fewer than 5 percent of people of Jewish religion identified as being of Jewish nationality. In small towns in Moravia (like Boskovice, Holešov, Lipník nad Bečvou, Prostějov, and Uherský Brod), where Jewish political communities existed until the beginning of the Czechoslovak Republic after World War I, more than half of all people of Jewish faith also claimed Jewish nationality. In the 1930 census the number of all people of Jewish nationality who were present in the town or city during the census is cited, and in several instances we added the number of people of Jewish nationality who were of Czechoslovak citizenship in the footnote. We mention both numbers only if there is a discrepancy of more than ten people. The major discrepancies can be observed in Prague (8,230 people in 1930, out of which only 6,747 were Czechoslovak citizens), Brno (4,129 of Jewish nationality, of which 3,072 were Czechoslovak citizens), and Moravská Ostrava (3,749 of Jewish nationality, of which 2,267 were Czechoslovak citizens). In Prague and Brno, this can be explained by, among other factors, the presence of Jewish students from Poland and Hungary who faced discrimination in their countries of origin and decided therefore to study

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in Czechoslova kia.4 In Moravská Ostrava, we can explain the discrepancy by the fact that the headquarters of the Czechoslovak Zionist Organization were situated in this city and also that a significant number of Polish Jews were in Moravská Ostrava for work and due to family networks. The numbers of Jews for 1921 and 1930 are, moreover, distorted by the fact that a number of persons did not declare themselves to be Jewish at all (whether in both categories or in one or the other), although they identified themselves with Judaism in some form. Moreover, all the censuses allowed a choice of only one of the possibilities—whether in questions of religion or in regard to nationality. Ambiguity or manifold identities could not be reflected in the census sheets.5 Following the Munich Pact, the border regions of Bohemia and Moravia were annexed by the German Reich beginning October 1, 1938. In May 1939 a census of the Jewish population was taken. This means that for communities in these border territories (in our selection, Carlsbad, Děčín, Teplice, and Opava) for May 1939, we have at our disposal not only the number of people who claimed to be of the Jewish faith, but also the number considered as Jews or Mischlinge according to Nazi legislation. The numbers from the Sudetenland show that by this time most Jews who had been living there a year earlier were already in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. From there they were deported with the rest of the Jews to Terezín and other camps. Only a small number of Jews who had been living in the borderlands escaped by emigrating. The data are ambiguous in the case of the number of those deported from individual Jewish communities. Unless indicated other wise, the number given includes all the Jews deported from the regional jurisdiction of the Jewish religious community—that is, not only from the town in question but also from the surrounding villages or towns. In five selected communities, the transports did not actually leave from those locales; to be deported, Jews first had to reach another town. Jews from Boskovice had to go to Brno, from Polná to Třebíč, from Holešov to Uherský Brod, from Prostějov to Olomouc, and from Děčín to Ústí nad Labem. Only in the last twenty years—in connection with memorials built to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust—have individual communities attempted to uncover data about individual Jewish victims thus making the deportation numbers more exact. However, this process is not yet complete. The vital records of the Jewish communities, the databases of victims, and the memories of survivors remain important sources for future study. The numbers in September  1941 are based on the estimates made by the leaders of the Jewish community in Prague on the orders of the Zentralstelle

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für jüdische Auswanderung. These estimates relate to fifteen regions of the Protectorate, but not to par ticular towns. The numbers of Jews in the smaller communities were taken from publications based on regional research. Consequently, a discrepancy arises among the numbers for larger cities (Prague, Kolín, Mladá Boleslav, Pilsen, Tábor, České Budějovice, Brno, and Moravská Ostrava), where the Jews of the surrounding area are also included. In all other places, only the Jews from the town are counted. Only a few Jewish communities renewed their activity after the liberation from Nazi occupation. Some of the western Jewish communities (Carlsbad, Mariánské Lázně, Františkovy Lázně, Cheb, and Sokolov) were exceptions, as were those of northern Bohemia (Děčín, Teplice, Ústí nad Labem, and Liberec), where repatriates from Subcarpathian Ruthenia (former Czechoslovak citizens) settled immediately after World War II. Many of these families then moved to Western Europe, the United States, and the newly established State of Israel.6 Even data from 1946 have a limit on their value. They are based on numbers declared by individual Jewish communities that had renewed their activities so they could qualify for financial support from the American Joint Distribution Committee (JDC). The numbers include also people who were not members of the community before World War II but were considered Jews according to the racist laws of the Protectorate. The numbers, however, do not include the Jews who tried to hide their Jewishness during the war and broke off any sort of contact with the Jewish communities. The numbers given in JDC documents are misleading in another regard as well. There are no figures at all from places where the Jewish community was not reinstated, even though there could have been a Jewish individual living there who had survived the war. Where such people declared themselves part of the closest reestablished community, they are counted among the Jewish inhabitants there.7

Selected Jewish Communities in Bohemia Carlsbad / Karlovy Vary, Karlsbad A 1499 ban on Jews living in Carlsbad remained in effect until 1848. Only in the spa season could Jewish tradesmen from nearby Hroznětín enter the town to trade, but they were not allowed to live there. The ban was often ignored, and Jews settled secretly in Carlsbad. Gradual changes began to take place from the beginning of the nineteenth century, when Jewish clients began to frequent the spa. In 1847 a prayer room was set up in the town for their needs, and later a medical institute. In 1853–55 the town council unsuccessfully tried to prevent a greater migration of Jewish families into the town during a time of emancipa-

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tion by imposing a new ban on the settlement of Jews (the last of its kind in the Bohemian Lands). A Jewish religious association was established in Carlsbad in 1864, and then changed in 1869 to an independent Jewish religious community. A large synagogue was built in the 1870s, and a cemetery was founded. Jewish entrepreneurs had a significant share in the development of the town as a whole. The number of newly settled Jewish families in the town between 1880 and 1921 showed a marked increase (two and a half times larger), and the Jewish community became the fourth largest in the Bohemian Lands. This trend continued until 1938, when 2,600 Jews were forced to leave their homes. Most of them moved to the interior of the country, and then were deported to the death camps in 1941. Only twenty-six returned. The Jewish religious community was reestablished after the liberation primarily with the settlement of Jewish migrants from Subcarpathian Ruthenia. Table 1. Jews in Carlsbad Ch. 1: 1500–1726

no Jews in the town

Ch. 2: 1726–1800

1793 8 pers. from other communities

Ch. 3: 1800–1860

1834 30 pers. secretly

Ch. 4: 1860–1917

1869 100 fam.

Ch. 5: 1917–38

1921 2,618 pers. of Jewish religion; 167 of Jewish nationality

1930 2,120 pers. of Jewish religion; 516 of Jewish nationalitya

before 1938 2,600 pers.

Ch. 6: 1938–45

May 1939 53 Jews according to the Nuremberg Laws; 209 Mischlinge; 28 members of Jewish communities

1938–45 transports to Theresienstadt: 117 pers.

1945 26 pers. returned

Ch. 7: 1945–2018

1880 1,000 pers.

1853 8 houses: spa and shop only 1885 914 pers.

1900 1,405 pers.

1910 1,600 pers.

1946 973 pers.

a The number relates to people present in the city at the time of the census. Only 243 of those who indicated Jewish nationality were Czechoslovak citizens.

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České Budějovice / Budweis Individual Jewish families settled in the town of České Budějovice from the fourteenth century. In subsequent centuries a large Jewish community emerged, a cemetery was established, and probably a prayer room as well. Conflicts between the Jews and Budějovice citizens culminated in 1506, when a pogrom took the lives of twenty people. Children were taken from their parents and baptised, and the remaining Jews were expelled from the town with the approval of the Bohemian and Hungarian king Vladislaus II. Many of these Jews were taken under the protection of surrounding domains, and they returned to the town only for markets, which they were allowed to attend from 1538. The ban on residence lasted until 1848. In the second half of the nineteenth century, the number of Jews grew rapidly. In 1859 a Jewish religious community was established and a prayer room set up. A few years later, a cemetery was established. Although in the census of 1890 Jews made up more than 4 percent of the inhabitants of the town, their numbers declined in subsequent decades. In 1942 the deportations from České Budějovice included 533 Jews, of whom only 28 returned. After the liberation, a synagogue congregation was set up but ceased to be active in 1970.

Table 2. Jews in České Budějovice Ch. 1: 1500–1726

1506 pogrom and expulsion

sixteenth century 100 pers.; 13 houses

Ch. 2: 1726–1800

1793 10 pers. from other communities

Ch. 3: 1800–1860

1857 166 pers.

Ch. 4: 1860–1917

1885 969 pers.

1890 1,972 pers.

1900 1,673 pers.

1910 1,640 pers.

1916 1,649 pers.

Ch. 5: 1917–38

1921 1,475 pers. of Jewish religion; 221 of Jewish nationality

1930 1,138 pers. of Jewish religion; 179 of Jewish nationality

Ch. 6: 1938–45

1942 transports to Theresienstadt: 533 pers. from the town; 910 pers. from the town and area

1945 28 pers. returning from the town; 32 pers. returning from the town and area

Ch. 7: 1945–2018

1946 161 pers.

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Děčín / Tetschen Jews had already settled in Děčín at the beginning of the sixteenth century. They were expelled in 1537. In subsequent centuries the town was only visited by Jewish traders, who were mainly from Poland. Jews did not begin to settle in Děčín and Podmokly again until the second half of the nineteenth century. Their number increased sharply in the following decades. A religious society was founded in 1887, and in 1895 the Jews of Děčín and Podmokly merged to form an independent Jewish community called Děčín-Podmokly. Its activity came to an end in the autumn 1938, after most of the local Jews left the Sudetenland. In 1942 the Podmokly Jewish community was merged with that of Děčín. After the liberation the Jewish religious community was reestablished with the arrival of repatriates from Subcarpathian Ruthenia, but it came to an end in 1964. The only synagogue in north Bohemia to be saved from destruction in 1939 had been built in 1906 in Podmokly. It had been financed through community donations. The building was returned to the Jewish religious community in 1994. Table 3. Jews in Děčín Ch. 1: 1500–1726

1537 expulsion

Ch. 2: 1726–1800

no Jews in the town

Ch. 3: 1800–1860

no Jews in the town

Ch. 4: 1860–1917

1880 57 pers.

Ch. 5: 1917–38

1921 473 pers. of Jewish religion; 81 pers. of Jewish nationality

1930 515 pers. of Jewish religion; 176 pers. of Jewish nationalitya

Ch. 6: 1938–45

May 1939 40 Jews according to the Nuremberg Laws and 63 Mischlinge; 21 members of the Jewish community

1941–45 transports to Theresienstadt: Jews from Děčín were transported along with Jews from Ústí nad Labem; 365 pers. total

Ch. 7: 1945–2018

1885 58 pers.

1887 162 pers.

1894 172 pers.

1900 265 pers.

1910 389 pers.

1916 399 pers.

1946 804 pers., vast majority of them migrants from Carpathian Ruthenia

The number relates to people present in the city at the time of the census. Only 117 of those who indicated Jewish nationality were Czechoslovak citizens.

a

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Hroznětín / Lichtenstadt The Jews expelled from Carlsbad in 1499 settled nearby, in Hroznětín. A sizable Jewish quarter with its own cemetery emerged at the end of the fifteenth century. In 1606 the Jewish community expanded as it took in refugees from Prague. Twenty-one families were registered in the 1638 list of Jews. Jewish traders travelled to nearby Carlsbad and were also regular visitors to the trade fairs in Leipzig. In the eighteenth century a synagogue was built for the needs of the growing Jewish community. The new Jewish cemetery also served for the burial of visitors to the spa at Carlsbad. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the number of Jews in Hroznětín had grown to 527. After the emergence of a Jewish religious community in Carlsbad in 1869 and a destructive fire in the Hroznětín ghetto in 1873, most of Hroznětín’s Jewish inhabitants moved to Carlsbad or other spa towns in the region. By 1921, only twenty-one persons declared themselves of the Jewish faith.

Table 4. Jews in Hroznětín Ch. 1: 1500–1726

1606 ca. 200 pers.a

1638 21 fam.b

1654 16 fam.

1713 40 fam.

1724 243 pers.

1793 292 pers.; 51 fam.

Ch. 2: 1726–1800 Ch. 3: 1800–1860

1811 52 fam.

Ch. 4: 1860–1917

1885 89 pers.

1916 25 pers.

1921 21 pers. of Jewish religion

1930 9 pers. of Jewish religion

Ch. 5: 1917–38 Ch. 6: 1938–45 Ch. 7: 1945–2018 a b

mid-19th century 527 pers.

most people fled 1946 0 pers.

Members of the Jewish community, mostly refugees from Prague. These numbers do not include servants and orphans.

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Kolín/ Kolin The minutes of the Kolín municipal books provide evidence of a Jewish settlement in the town as early as the second half of the fourteenth century. There was a Jewish synagogue, school, and cemetery in the Jewish quarter. After the Jews were expelled in 1541, some went to Poland and Galicia, returning to Kolín twenty-three years later. Despite the losses suffered due to a plague epidemic and war fatalities, the Jewish community in Kolín was after Prague the largest in Bohemia in the seventeenth century. The number of houses and inhabitants of the ghetto continued to increase up to the mid-nineteenth century. After 1848 many Jews moved from Kolín to Prague, as did other Jewish families from communities in central Bohemia. Membership of the Kolín Jewish community dropped by more than 50 percent between 1869 and 1921, and

Table 5. Jews in Kolín Ch. 1: 1500– 1726 Ch. 2: 1726– 1800

1504 300 pers.

1621 54 fam.b

1783 969 pers.

1651 271 pers.; 67 fam.

1879 1,209 pers.

1885 1,148 pers.

1654 87 fam.

1713 1724 138 869/909 pers.; fam. 227 fam.

1793 1,153 pers.; 226 fam.

1811 220 fam.

Ch. 3: 1800– 1860 Ch. 4: 1860– 1917

1574 1558 27 fam.a 33 fam.

1799 224 fam. 1857 1,341 pers.

1890 1,075 pers.

1900 806 pers.

1910 634 pers.

Ch. 5: 1917– 38

1921 570 pers. of Jewish religion; 32 of Jewish nationality

1930 430 pers. of Jewish religion; 9 of Jewish nationality

Ch. 6: 1938– 45

1942 transports to Theresienstadt: 500 pers. from the town; 2,200 from surrounding area

1945 69 pers. from town; 135 from the surrounding area returned

Ch. 7: 1945– 2018 a b

1541–64 temporary expulsion. Distributed among 37 houses.

1946 237 pers.

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this process continued in the decades that followed. In June  1942 a total of 2,200 Jews were deported from Kolín and its surroundings; 500 of them were from the town itself. Only sixty-nine from Kolín returned and 135 of those from the surroundings. The Jewish religious community was reestablished after the liberation and later became a synagogue congregation. Mladá Boleslav / Jungbunzlau Records of Jewish settlement in Mladá Boleslav date from the fifteenth century; the earliest mention appears in 1471. A Jewish quarter was established in the town itself. Despite expulsion threats in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the ghetto continued to grow, and in 1687 Jews accounted for 50 percent of all the inhabitants of the town. A cemetery was established, and a new synagogue built. The Jewish community was home to several noted scholars, and it became a center of Jewish learning. By the mid-nineteenth century, the number of Jews settled in the town had grown to 900 (18 percent of the inhabitants). After 1850 this process came to a halt, and the Boleslav Jews gradually began to leave, mostly for nearby Prague. During the occupation 159 local Jews together with 882 persons from the surroundings were deported from Mladá Boleslav, Table 6. Jews in Mladá Boleslav Ch. 1: 1500–1726 Ch. 2: 1726–1800 Ch. 3: 1800–1860 Ch. 4: 1860–1917

1570 16 fam.

1620 1687 1600 1615 12 fam. 120 pers.a 126 pers.; 775 pers. 27 fam.

1737 707 pers.

1783 481 pers.

1811 113 fam. 1880 845 pers.

1793 596 pers.; 127 familiant fam.

1834 794 pers. 1885 851 pers.

1702 408 pers.

1890 693 pers.

1799 120 fam.

mid-19th century 900 pers. 1900 566 pers.

1910 402 pers.

Ch. 5: 1917–38

1921 419 pers. of Jewish religion; 19 of Jewish nationality

1930 264 pers. of Jewish religion; 22 of Jewish nationality

Ch. 6: 1938–45

1942 transports to Theresienstadt: 1,041 pers. from the city and surrounding area

1945 48 pers. returned

Ch. 7: 1945–2018 a

Older than ten years of age.

1946 55 pers.

1713 150 fam.

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and forty-eight of locals survived imprisonment. After the liberation the Jewish religious community saw a brief period of revitalization. Náchod / Nachod A report of 1455 about the purchase of a house by a Jew is one of the earliest references to the settlement of Jews in Náchod. More consistent Jewish settlement gradually took place in later decades. In 1542 Jews were forced to leave the town, and their houses were sold. After they returned in the second half of the sixteenth century, a synagogue was built and a cemetery established for the needs of the Jewish community. The number of Jews who settled in the newly built houses in “Jewish Street” increased over the course of the seventeenth century. Despite the fact that they were again banned from the town in 1670, a list of 1724 recorded the residence of 51 Jewish families (199 persons). The number of Jews settled in Náchod continued to increase in the nineteenth century. In 1900 they comprised nearly 5  percent of the town’s population. They had a significant share in the development of the textile industry in the region. Yet over the next thirty years, the censuses recorded a gradual decline in persons of the Jewish faith. In December 1942, 256 Náchod Jews were deported on the Table 7. Jews in Náchod Ch. 1: 1500–1726 Ch. 2: 1726–1800

1620 7 houses

1624 12 houses

1764 261 pers.

1631 10 houses

1783 207 pers.; 43 fam.

Ch. 5: 1917–38

Ch. 6: 1938–45 Ch. 7: 1945–2018 a

1652 16 houses

1787 254 pers.

1713 42 fam.

1724 199 pers.; 51 fam.

1793 286 pers.; 50 fam.

1811 49 fam.

Ch. 3: 1800–1860 Ch. 4: 1860–1917

1648 133 pers.a

1885 471 pers. 1921 463 pers. of Jewish religion; 124 of Jewish nationality

1900 458 pers.

1916 414 pers.

1930 293 pers. of Jewish religion; 72 of Jewish nationality

1942 transport: 256 pers.

1938 290 pers.

1945 15 pers. returned 1946 56 pers.

Twelve houses and six families in Christian houses.

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transport, of whom 241 perished. The JDC stated that in 1946 there were fiftysix members in the community, but even this small population soon declined to zero. Pilsen / Plzeň / Pilsen Jewish settlement in Pilsen is mentioned as early as 1338. In the fifteenth century Jewish Pilsen included a ghetto with two synagogues, a school, and its own cemetery. In 1504 the town obtained permission to expel the Jews. By 1533 Jews had left the town and settled in surrounding communities in Blovice and Kasejovice. It was not until 1790 that residence in the town was granted to the family of a Jewish tradesman. Other families began to settle in Pilsen without permission, and with the gradual increase in numbers, a new prayer room was opened in 1850, and Pilsen became the seat of the local rabbi. The development of the food industry brought Jewish entrepreneurs and tradesmen to the town from surrounding communities, and the Jewish community grew considerably in the second half of the nineteenth century. In the period 1888–93, a new Table 8. Jews in Pilsen Ch. 1: 1500–1726

1504 and 1533a expulsion

Ch. 2: 1726–1800

1793 11 pers.

Ch. 3: 1800–1860 Ch. 4: 1860–1917 Ch. 5: 1917–38

Ch. 6: 1938–45 Ch. 7: 1945–2018

1821 32 pers. 1869 250 pers.

1837 3 fam. 1870 1,207 pers.

1921 3,175 pers. of Jewish religion; 705 of Jewish nationality

1880 2,251 pers.

1890 3,000 pers.

1930 2,773 pers. of Jewish religion; 744 of Jewish nationalityb

1942 transports to Theresienstadt: 2,613 pers. from the city and surrounding area 1945 412 pers.

1850 10 fam.

1854 41 fam.; 249 pers. 1900 3,203 pers.

1916 3,517 pers.

1938 3,200 pers.

1945 204 pers. returned

1948 168 pers. (emigration)

2018 20–25 pers.

In the fifteenth century, there were ten Jewish houses. The number relates to people present in the city at the time of the census. Only 744 of those who indicated Jewish nationality were Czechoslovak citizens.

a

b

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synagogue, known as the Great Synagogue (the second largest in Europe after the synagogue in Budapest), was built and a new cemetery established. The census results between the wars recorded a moderate decline in the Jewish population. In 1930 there were 2,773 persons who claimed to be of the Jewish faith. In January  1942 three transports deported 2,613 Jews from Pilsen and the surrounding area; of these, 204 returned by 1945. After the liberation the Jewish religious community was reestablished. Polná / Polna Jewish settlement in Polná is mentioned in the municipal records from the first half of the sixteenth century. Subsequent decades saw the emergence of a Jewish community that gradually expanded. In 1646 Ferdinand von Dietrichstein, owner of the domain, limited the number of settled Jews to sixteen families, and in 1675 he arranged for a ghetto to be built in a suburb not far from the old Jewish cemetery. A few years later the ghetto was moved nearer to the town, the first synagogue was built, and a hospital was set up. Despite various limitations on the Jewish population, as well as damage wrought by numerous fires, the Table 9. Jews in Polná Ch. 1: 1500–1726

1626 2 houses

1654 10 pers.

1676 16 familiant fam.

1681 16 new houses

1793 510 pers.; 84 familiant fam.

1713 54 fam.; 24 houses

Ch. 2: 1726–1800

1757 90 fam.; 29 houses

Ch. 3: 1800–1860

1811 87 fam.

1830 128 fam.; 770 pers.

1841 557 pers.

Ch. 4: 1860–1917

1885 338 pers.

1898 238 pers.

1916 108 pers.

Ch. 5: 1917–38

1921 69 pers. of Jewish religion; 5 of Jewish nationality

1930 51 pers. of Jewish religion; 2 of Jewish nationality

1938 37 pers.

Ch. 6: 1938–45

1942 transport to Theresienstadt: 63 pers.

Ch. 7: 1945–2018

1783 310 pers.

1712 32 fam.

1946 0 pers.

1724 59 fam./ 304 pers.

1799 80 fam.

1945 3 pers. returned

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number of Jewish inhabitants continued to increase. In 1830 there were 128 families settled in Polná, comprising 12  percent of the town’s inhabitants. In the second half of the nineteenth century, the number of Jews gradually declined. Displays of antisemitism following an alleged ritual murder in 1899 (known as the Hilsner Affair) speeded up the process. The last rabbi left the Jewish community in 1920. Ten years later only fifty-one persons claimed to be of the Jewish faith. In 1942 the Jewish inhabitants were deported to Theresienstadt. The Jewish religious community was not rebuilt after the liberation. Prague / Praha / Prag The first Jewish settlements in what is today the city of Prague were established in the eleventh century below Vyšehrad and where the Malá Strana (Lesser Quarter) is today. The Vyšehrad settlement disappeared after a pogrom in 1096. After an extensive fire in 1142, the Jews moved from the Malá Strana to the right bank of the river, where another settlement had emerged in the eleventh century (close to the present-day Spanish synagogue). A larger settlement was established in the twelfth century (today the area around the Staronová [Old-New] Synagogue). The merging of the two settlements gradually led to the creation of what was known as the Jewish Town. In the Middle Ages the ghetto where Prague Jews were concentrated was the largest in Central Europe. It was divided from the Christian community of Prague in the Staré Město (Old Town) by walls and gates. Inside the Jewish Town were a number of synagogues and public buildings (baths, hospitals, and schools). The Jews were temporarily banned from Prague in 1541 and again in 1557. From the end of the sixteenth century, the number of inhabitants of the Jewish Town continued to increase. Jews in search of religious education came to Prague from the Bohemian Lands and abroad. In the second half of the seventeenth century, the Prague ghetto also became a haven for refugees fleeing the war in Poland and Lithuania and for Jewish families expelled from Vienna. At the end of the seventeenth century, the Jewish Town suffered a destructive fire and endured a plague epidemic that initially reduced the number of its inhabitants to less than half, yet the Prague Jewish population continued to increase. According to a list from 1729, the Prague Jewish community was one of the largest in Europe. After the sack of Prague by the Prussian army, the resident Jews were accused of collaboration and banned from the city in December 1744. Most of them settled not far from Prague (often in communities that are today part of Prague) and waited until 1748 for permission to return. The four towns of Prague (Old Town, New Town, Lesser Quarter, and Hradčany) were merged at the time of the Josephine reforms in the 1780s. The Jewish Town, known as Josefov, was connected to these

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towns as a fifth quarter. After the ghetto was abolished in 1848, most of its inhabitants moved to other parts of Prague. The Jewish population in Prague again grew with the arrival of migrants from Jewish communities from the areas surrounding Prague, and this trend continued in subsequent years. Nearly 30,000 refugees from Galicia settled in Prague during World War I, but most of them left at the end of the war. Other Jewish migrants came to Prague after the Nazis took power in Germany and after the occupation of Austria. In 1941 there were 46,800 persons living in Prague who were considered Jewish according to the Nazi race laws. In the years to follow, the vast majority (39,605) of them were deported. After the liberation the Jewish religious community was reestablished. Separate Jewish communities existed in the Prague suburbs. The earliest of them was the Jewish Community in Libeň, where Jews had settled from the beginning of the seventeenth century. From the second half of the nineteenth century, numerically large Jewish communities existed in other towns that also became part of Greater Prague in 1922 (Karlín, Michle, Smíchov, Královské Vinohrady, and Žižkov). Table 10. Jews in Prague Ch. 1: 1500–1726

1546 ca. 1,000 pers.

Ch. 2: 1726–1800

1726 1744 10,705 pers. expulsion

Ch. 3: 1800–1860

1638 7,815 pers.

1811 7,675 pers.

1653 2,090 pers.

1656 11,000 pers.

1754 8,500 pers.

1830 6,858 pers.

1680 7,113 pers.

1702 11,618 pers.

1785 7,901 pers. 1846 8,067 pers. 1900 27,289 pers.

1714 7,832a pers.

1792 8,158 pers. 1857 6,217 pers.

Ch. 4: 1860–1917

1869 1880 1890 15,214 pers. 20,508 pers. 23,473 pers.

1910 29,107 pers.

Ch. 5: 1917–38

1921 31,751 pers. of Jewish religion; 5,959 of Jewish nationality

1930 35,425 pers. of Jewish religion; 8,230 of Jewish nationalityb

Ch. 6: 1938–45

1939 46,170 pers.

1941–45 transports to Theresienstadt: 39,605 pers.

Ch. 7: 1945–2018

1946 9,131 pers.

1948 10,760 pers.

After the plague. The number relates to people present in the city at the time of the census. Only 6,747 of those who indicated Jewish nationality were Czechoslovak citizens.

a

b

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Tábor / Tabor Jews were banned from permanent residence in Tábor until the end of the sixteenth century. The first Jewish families settled in the town as late as 1594. In the first half of the seventeenth century, the Jewish community grew with an influx from Týn nad Vltavou and Soběslav. A Jewish community was established, a house was purchased for a prayer room, and land was secured to start a cemetery. By 1654 eight Jewish families had settled in the town, but this number could not be exceeded until the middle of the eighteenth century. No ghetto was built in Tábor, and Jewish families lived scattered among the rest of the population. Not even repeated attempts by the town council to obtain permission from the ruler allowing them to expel the Jews prevented the further development of the Jewish community. In 1885 a synagogue and a new cemetery were built. According to the 1930 census only 311 persons claimed to be of the Jewish faith in Tábor. In 1942, 131 persons were deported from Tábor, and only seventeen returned. After the liberation the Jewish religious community was reestablished and later transformed into a synagogue congregation. Table 11. Jews in Tábor Ch. 1: 1500–1726 Ch. 2: 1726–1800

1618 2 fam. 1769 18 fam.

1654 6 houses; 8 fam.

1690 29 pers. 1783 79 pers.

1700 39 pers.

1713 5 pers.

1793 139 pers.

1799 19 familiant fam.

Ch. 3: 1800–1860

1806 32 fam.

1811 15 familiant fam.

1830 32 fam.

1840 212 pers.; 36 houses

Ch. 4: 1860–1917

1880 495 pers.

1890 446 pers.

1900 459 pers.

1910 245 pers.

Ch. 5: 1917–38

1921 534 pers. of Jewish religion; 18 of Jewish nationality

1930 311 pers. of Jewish religion; 11 of Jewish nationality

Ch. 6: 1938–45

1942 transports to Theresienstadt: 131 pers. from the city and 1,140 surrounding area

1945 17 pers. from the city and 57 from the surrounding area returned

Ch. 7: 1945–2018

1946 105 pers.

Demographic Supplement

297

Teplice / Teplitz Even though the first reference to Jewish settlement in Teplice dates from 1414, a Jewish community probably did not emerge there until the end of the fifteenth century. In subsequent centuries, with an increase in the size of the Jewish community, a Jewish quarter developed inside the town, a synagogue was built, and a cemetery was established. In the middle of the seventeenth century, the Jews comprised a third of all inhabitants in the town. Count Clary-Aldringen, the owner of the city, decided to decrease their numbers in 1668 with the Jews’ temporary expulsion from the town. In 1726 only 55 Jewish families were permitted in the town. A Jewish medical spa operated outside the ghetto, and in the nineteenth century a Jewish medical institute was established here. Even in the face of discriminatory measures, the Jewish population in Teplice continued to grow, and in 1890 the Jewish community there was the second largest in Bohemia after Prague. In the census of 1930, persons claiming to be of the Jewish faith numbered 3,213. In 1938 some of the Jewish population managed to leave Teplice, but the remainder were moved to the interior and subsequently deported Table 12. Jews in Teplice Ch. 1: 1500–1726

1600 29 fam.

Ch. 2: 1726–1800

1726 55 familiant fam.

Ch. 3: 1800–1860

1618 78 fam.

1652 231 pers.

1811 91 fam.

1724 339 pers.; 60 fam.

1793 372 pers.; 80 fam. 1853 550 pers.

1870 1885 1,480 pers. 1,718 pers.

Ch. 5: 1917–38

1921 3,954 pers. of Jewish religion; 518 of Jewish nationality

Ch. 7: 1945–2018

1713 53 fam.

1783 58 fam.

Ch. 4: 1860–1917

Ch. 6: 1938–45

1702 187 pers.

1890 1,865 pers.

1900 2,371 pers.

1910 2,704 pers.

1930 3,213 pers. of Jewish religion; 984 of Jewish nationalitya

May 1939 341 Jews according to the Nuremberg Laws and 371 Mischlinge; 264 members of Jewish community 1946 892 pers.

1949 420 pers.

2018 ca. 100 members of community

The number relates to people present in the city at the time of the census. Only 667 of those who indicated Jewish nationality were Czechoslovak citizens.

a

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to Terezín and other concentration camps. The Jewish religious community was reestablished after the liberation. The number of Jews settled within its territorial limits increased with the arrival of repatriates from Subcarpathian Ruthenia.

Selected Jewish Communities in Moravia and in Silesia Boskovice / Boskowitz The Jewish community in Boskovice was one of the largest in Moravia. It originated in the first half of the fifteenth century, and its population increased when Jews expelled from Brno settled there after 1454. At the same time it seems a Jewish quarter was founded, which by the beginning of the eighteenth century had some 1,500 inhabitants and a newly built synagogue. Attempts to restrict the growing Jewish population by implementing what was known as the Familiants Law led gradually to the departure of some of the Boskovice Jews for what is today Slovakia. From the beginning of the eighteenth century, residence was permitted to 326 families. The second half of the nineteenth century saw a marked decline in the Jewish population of Boskovice as a result of the migraTable 13. Jews in Boskovice Ch. 1: 1500–1726

1589 148 pers.

1667 30 settlers

1677 31 settlers

Ch. 2: 1726–1800

1727 1,531 pers.

1748 1,379 pers.

1764 1,096 pers.

Ch. 3: 1800–1860

1804 1,603 pers.

Ch. 4: 1860–1917

1880 1,009 pers. in the Jewish political community; 314 in the Christian

Ch. 5: 1917–38 Ch. 6: 1938–45 Ch. 7: 1945–2018

1834 1,949 pers.

1844 1,950 pers.

1900 598 pers. in the Jewish political community; 252 in the Christian

1921 545 pers. of Jewish religion; 349 of Jewish nationality 1939 394 pers.

1848 1,973 pers.

1857 1,810 pers.

1910 458 pers. in the Jewish political community; 134 in the Christian

1930 452 pers. of Jewish religion; 368 of Jewish nationalitya

1942 transport: 458 pers.

1945 14 pers. returned

1946 108 pers.

a The number relates to people present in the city at the time of the census. Only 336 of those who indicated Jewish nationality were Czechoslovak citizens.

Demographic Supplement

299

tion of Jewish families to Brno and other places, and this trend continued in the first half of the twentieth century. In March 1942 the Jews of Boskovice were deported to Theresienstadt. After World War II, the Jewish religious community was reestablished and later joined to the Jewish religious community in Brno. Brno / Brünn Jews settled in the territory of what became Brno as early as the second half of the thirteenth century. The numerically large Jewish community had a synagogue, a school, and its own cemetery. In 1454, however, Ladislaus the Posthumous banned the Jews from the town, and all that remained was a small Jewish community with a prayer room and printing house in the suburb Křenová (Kröna). A few families gradually gained permission to settle inside the town at the end of the eighteenth century. A reform Jewish religious community was set up in 1848, and six years later a new synagogue was built. As the town developed, the number of Jews moving to Brno from smaller Moravian cities abruptly increased. Censuses carried out between 1880 and 1921 show that the community doubled. As a result of racial persecution, more than 90 percent of the local Jews perished during World War II. After the liberation the Jewish religious community was reestablished. Table 14. Jews in Brno Ch. 1: 1500–1726

no Jews in the towna

Ch. 2: 1726–1800

end of the 18th century ca. 52 pers.

Ch. 3: 1800–1860

1834 135 pers.

1848 445 pers.

1857 2,230 pers.

Ch. 4: 1860–1917

1880 5,498 pers.

1900 8,238 pers.

1910 8,945 pers.

Ch. 5: 1917–38

1921 10,866 pers. of Jewish religion; 2,953 of Jewish nationality

1930 10,202 pers. of Jewish religion; 4,129 of Jewish nationalityb

Ch. 6: 1938–45

1941–43 transports: 10,080 pers. from the city and surrounding area

1945 841 pers. returned

Ch. 7: 1945–2018

1946 1,457 pers.

Before the expulsion in 1454 there were ca. 1,000 Jews in Brno. The number relates to people present in the city at the time of the census. Only 3,072 of those who indicated Jewish nationality were Czechoslovak citizens. a

b

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Holešov / Holleschau Individual Jewish families settled in Holešov in the middle of the fifteenth century. Their number increased with the arrival of Jews expelled from Olomouc in 1454. The establishment of a Jewish community came a century later. A synagogue was built in the growing Jewish quarter after 1559, and the first rabbinical synod was held there in 1653. The Jewish community in Holešov was one of the largest in Moravia, with 265 allowed families settled there in the eighteenth century up to the middle of the nineteenth century. The community was at its largest in the first half of the nineteenth century, when Jews comprised more than 30  percent of the town’s inhabitants. The ghetto in Holešov suffered not only frequent fires but also pogroms (in 1774 and 1899). The last of these, in 1918, killed two people, and is thought to be the last pogrom in the Bohemian Lands (if we do not count the physical violence inflicted on Jews from the time of the pogrom in the Sudetenland in November 1938). The Jewish town was a self-governing cadastral unit until its merging with the town of Holešov in April 1919. After 1857 the size of the Jewish community essentially decreased Table 15. Jews in Holešov 1675 47 inhabited and 12 abandoned houses

Ch. 1: 1500–1726 Ch. 2: 1726–1800

1745 1,500 pers.

1794 1,032 pers.

Ch. 3: 1800–1860

18th–mid 19th century 265 familiant fam.

1834 1,576 pers.

1848 1,649 pers.

Ch. 4: 1860–1917

1880 610 pers. in the Jewish political community; 207 in the Christian

1900 443 pers. in the Jewish political community; 252 in the Christian

1910 381 pers. in the Jewish political community; 232 in the Christian

Ch. 5: 1917–38 Ch. 6: 1938–45

Ch. 7: 1945–2018

1921 342 pers. of Jewish religion; 125 of Jewish nationality 1938 341 pers.

1930 282 pers. of Jewish religion; 198 of Jewish nationality

1943 transport to Theresienstadt: 273 pers. 1946 43 pers.

1945 14 pers. returned

Demographic Supplement

301

as Jews moved to Olomouc, Ostrava, Brno, and Vienna, and this trend continued until 1930, when 282 claimed to be of the Jewish faith and 198 persons identified with Jewish nationality. In 1943 the Jews from Holešov were deported first to Uherský Brod and then to Terezín. After World War II the Jewish religious community was temporarily reconstituted. Lipník nad Bečvou / Leipnik The earliest references to Jewish settlement in Lipník nad Bečvou date from the middle of the fifteenth century. The Jewish population grew with the arrival of families expelled in 1454 from Olomouc and Uničov. In the first half of the sixteenth century, a Jewish community with a synagogue already existed in Lipník, which about a hundred years later (1654) had 365 permanent inhabitants, and its own Jewish school, hospital, and cemetery. From the end of the eighteenth century, 255 families were allowed to live in the town. Despite this restriction, the Jewish community continued to grow. As a result of Jews moving to larger Moravian towns over the next fifty years, their number in Lipník fell by more than 561. According to the census in 1930, there were 160 persons of the Jewish faith in Lipník nad Bečvou. During the occupation, 144 Jews from

Table 16. Jews in Lipník nad Bečvou Ch. 1: 1500–1726 Ch. 2: 1726–1800 Ch. 3: 1800–1860 Ch. 4: 1860–1917

Ch. 5: 1917–38 Ch. 6: 1938–45 Ch. 7: 1945–2018

1530 18 fam.

1536 36 fam.

1589 36 fam.

1794 975 pers. 1804 1,441 pers.

1618 36 fam.

1654 365 pers.

end of the 18th century 255 familiant fam.

1835 1,441 pers.

1844 1,614 pers.

1848 1,664 pers.

1900 294 pers. in the Jewish political community; 240 in the Christian

1880 485 pers. in the Jewish political community; 288 in the Christian 1921 221 pers. of Jewish religion; 203 of Jewish nationality

1857 1,687 pers.

1910 206 pers. in the Jewish political community; 174 in the Christian

1930 160 pers. of Jewish religion; 107 of Jewish nationality

1942 transport: 144 pers. 1946 0 pers.

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Lipník nad Bečvou and its surroundings perished. The Jewish religious community was reestablished for only a few months after the liberation. Mikulov / Nikolsburg Mikulov, the seat of the Moravian rabbi, was population-wise the largest and also the most important Jewish community in Moravia. The earliest written reference to a Jewish settlement in Mikulov dates from 1369. A Jewish community was established there in the fifteenth century, when the first synagogue was built. Over the next two centuries, Mikulov became an impor tant center of Jewish education in Moravia. The number of Jewish families settled in the ghetto continued to grow and was significantly expanded in 1670 with the influx of almost eighty families that had been expelled from Vienna. At the end of the eighteenth century, 620 Jewish families were allowed to live in Mikulov, and by the middle of the nineteenth century, Jews comprised a third of the inhabitants of the town. Table 17. Jews in Mikulov Ch. 1: 1500–1726

Ch. 2: 1726–1800 Ch. 3: 1800–1860 Ch. 4: 1860–1917

Ch. 5: 1917–38 Ch. 6: 1938–45 Ch. 7: 1945–2018

1560 32 owners of houses

1574 68 houses

1737 3,500 pers.

1582 73 houses

1590 96 houses

1793 3,238 pers.

1836 3,520 pers. 1869 1,500 pers.

1798 620 familiant fam. 1848 3,670 pers.

1880 1,139 pers. in the Jewish political community; 74 in the Christian

1921 705 pers. of Jewish religion; 267 of Jewish nationality 1938 472 pers.; 110 refugees

1657 146 fam.; 98 houses; 1,000 pers.

1910 1900 757 pers. in the 606 pers. in the Jewish political Jewish political community; community; 136 in the 143 in the Christian Christian 1930 535 pers. of Jewish religion; 187 of Jewish nationalitya

1942 transport: 327 pers.

1945 34 pers. returned

1946 49 pers.

a The number relates to people present in the city at the time of the census. Only 171 of those who indicated Jewish nationality were Czechoslovak citizens.

Demographic Supplement

303

After 1848 the importance of the Jewish community in Mikulov gradually declined as most Mikulov Jews moved to larger Moravian towns and to Vienna. In 1938 there were fewer than 500 persons of the Jewish faith living in Mikulov, 70 percent of whom became the victims of racial persecution. Opava / Troppau The earliest reference to a Jewish settlement in Opava comes in 1281. In the Middle Ages, the Opava Jewish community had included a cemetery and a synagogue, both of which completely disappeared after the Jews were expelled from the town in the first half of the sixteenth century. Individual Jewish families did not begin to settle in Opava again until the first half of the nineteenth century. A new synagogue was built in 1855. In subsequent decades the number of Jewish families grew rapidly; at the end of the nineteenth century, Jews comprised nearly 5 percent of the Opava population and remained at this level until the beginning of the twentieth century. An imposing synagogue was built to

Table 18. Jews in Opava Ch. 1: 1500–1726

1501 expulsion

1523 expulsion

Ch. 2: 1726–1800

no Jews in the city

Ch. 3: 1800–1860

1844 42 pers.

Ch. 4: 1860–1917 Ch. 5: 1917–38

Ch. 6: 1938–45

Ch. 7: 1945–2018

1876 134 pers.

1880 1,061 pers.

1900 1,047 pers.

1930 971 pers. of Jewish religion; 575 of Jewish nationalitya

1921 1,127 pers. of Jewish religion; 608 of Jewish nationality 1938 99 Jews according to the Nuremberg Laws; 138 Mischlinge

1910 1,112 pers.

May 1939 62 members of the Jewish community

1942–44 transports to Theresienstadt: 79 pers.

1943 transport to the East: 40 pers.

1946 87 pers.

The number relates to people present in the city at the time of the census. Only 502 of those who indicated Jewish nationality were Czechoslovak citizens.

a

304

Helena Klímová and Lenka Matušíková

serve the large Jewish community in 1896. After the Munich Pact of September 1938, Opava was included in the Sudetenland, which was annexed by the German Reich. Two months later, during the November Pogrom (formerly called Crystal Night), the Opava synagogue was burned down. The Jewish religious community was reestablished after the liberation and later became a synagogue congregation. It ceased activity by 1970. Osoblaha / Hotzenplotz There is a record of a Jewish settlement in Osoblaha in 1334, when a few Jewish families who had fled a pogrom in Hlubčice settled in a suburb. A hundred years later, the Jews obtained permission to live in the center. As a Moravian enclave in Silesia (a fief of the Olomouc archbishop), Osoblaha was not subject to Silesian law; thus when Jewish families were banned from living in Silesian towns from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, they found refuge here. The Jewish community had its own cemetery in Osoblaha from the middle of the fifteenth century, and the first synagogue was built in 1569. The Jewish community flourished most in the first half of the nineteenth century, when Table 19. Jews in Osoblaha Ch. 1: 1500–1726

1570 132 fam.

1763 467 pers.

Ch. 2: 1726–1800 Ch. 3: 1800–1867 Ch. 4: 1867–1917 Ch. 5: 1917–38

1616 135 fam.

1802 845 pers.a

1804 510 pers.

1880 129 pers.

1648 160 pers.

1667 4 occupied houses

1788 589/596 pers. 1837 587 pers.

1842 671 pers.

1890 102 pers.

1844 671 pers.

1799 510 pers. 1857 880 pers.

1900 74 pers.

1921 1930 35 pers. of Jewish religion; 13 pers. of Jewish religion; 7 of Jewish nationality 5 of Jewish nationality

Ch. 6: 1938–45

0 pers.

Ch. 7: 1945–2018

0 pers.

1676 8 occupied houses

1859 298 pers.

1864 200 pers.b

1910 123 pers. 1934 1 pers.

153 familiant families. Present persons; there were also 611 absent persons (i.e., persons who were permitted to settle there but were living elsewhere).

a

b

Demographic Supplement

305

Jews made up 18 percent of the inhabitants of the town. After 1857 there was a marked decline in the Jewish population as industry became more developed in the region and Jewish families moved to larger towns. The independent Jewish religious community apparently merged with the Jewish community in Krnov. In the 1930 census, only 13 persons claimed to be of the Jewish faith. Ostrava (Moravská Ostrava) / Mährisch Ostrau There was no consistent Jewish settlement recorded in the territory that became Ostrava before 1500. The first Jewish families in Moravská Ostrava may have settled there as late as 1508. The development of the Jewish community was interrupted in 1531, when Jews were expelled from the town. Even though the ban on residence was not maintained consistently, Jews were not allowed to stay overnight in the town until the end of the eighteenth century. After 1800 individual families began to settle in Ostrava, and the first prayer room was set up. The Ostrava Jewish community grew in numbers in the 1860s, with the arrival of Jews from Těšín. In 1875 a Jewish religious community was established, and four years later the main synagogue built. The rapid development Table 20. Jews in Ostrava 1508 1 fam.

Ch. 1: 1500–1726 Ch. 2: 1726–1800 Ch. 3: 1800–1867 Ch. 4: 1867–1917

1783 1 fam.

1531 expulsion 1792 1 fam.

1855 14 fam.; 50 pers. 1880 1,077 pers.

1800 4 fam. 1867 400 pers.

1900 5,000 pers.

1910 6,097 pers.

Ch. 5: 1917–38

1921 6,872 pers. of Jewish religion; 2,601 of Jewish nationality

1930 6,865 pers. of Jewish religion; 3,749 of Jewish nationality a

Ch. 6: 1938–45

October 1939 transports to Nisko: 1,223 men

1942 and 1945 transports to Theresienstadt: 3,573 pers. from the city and surrounding area Only ca. 250 pers. returned

Ch. 7: 1945–2018

1946 707 pers.

a The number relates to people present in the city at the time of the census. Only 2,267 of those who indicated Jewish nationality were Czechoslovak citizens.

306

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of industry in the Ostrava region at the turn of the twentieth century also marked an increase in the numbers of new inhabitants. Jews from Slovakia and Galicia came to Ostrava and the surrounding smaller towns. Larger Jewish communities with their own prayer rooms and synagogues emerged in, for example, Vítkovice, Přívoz, and Silesian Ostrava. Between 1800 and 1921 the number of Jews settled inside the town rose by more than five thousand. In 1924 Moravská Ostrava was merged with the surrounding communities (Zábřeh, Vítkovice, Přívoz, and Mariánské Hory), creating what was known as Velká Ostrava. Close to 4,800 Jews were deported to concentration camps. After the liberation the Jewish religious community was reestablished. Prostějov / Prossnitz The earliest reference to a Jewish settlement in Prostějov dates from 1445. The number of Jewish families settled in the town grew in 1454 with the arrival of Jews expelled from Olomouc. In the middle of the sixteenth century, the Jewish Table 21. Jews in Prostějov Ch. 1: 1500–1726

1584 31 fam.

1656–57 50 settled pers.

1667 64 settled pers.

1713 318 fam.; 1,398 pers.

end of the 18th century 328 familiant fam.

Ch. 2: 1726–1800 Ch. 3: 1800–1860

1804 1,704 pers.

1833 1,500 pers.

Ch. 4: 1860–1917

1880 1,804 pers.

1890 797 pers. in the Jewish political community; 935 in the Christian

1837 1,742 pers.

1844 1,838 pers.

1900 566 pers. in the Jewish political community; 987  in the Christian

1853 1,779 pers.

1910 389 pers. in the Jewish political community; 1,119  in the Christian

Ch. 5: 1917–38

1921 1,433 pers. of Jewish religion; 562 of Jewish nationality

1930 1,422 pers. of Jewish religion; 938 of Jewish nationality a

Ch. 6: 1938–45

1942 transports to Theresienstadt: 1,600 pers. from the city and surrounding area

1945 100 pers. returned

Ch. 7: 1945–2018

1946 233 pers.

a The number relates to people present in the city at the time of the census. Only 740 of those who indicated Jewish nationality were Czechoslovak citizens.

Demographic Supplement

307

quarter had its own school and synagogue. In the next century, too, the Jewish community grew, and more homes were built to accommodate Jews fleeing pogroms in Poland and expulsion in Vienna in 1670. At the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, 328 Jewish families had residence permits, and they made up almost a quarter of the inhabitants of the town. The Prostějov Jewish community was one of the largest such community in Moravia even at the time of emancipation. Compared with other Jewish communities in Moravia, where there had been an abrupt fall in membership at the end of the nineteenth century, Prostějov maintained a high number of Jewish inhabitants, reflecting the sizable role Jews played in the increasing development in the town. The Jewish community was destroyed between June and July 1942, with the deportation of 1,433 persons to Theresienstadt. Třebíč / Trebitsch The earliest recorded reference to a Jewish settlement in Třebíč dates from 1433. A Jewish community existed there in the middle of the sixteenth century, when Jews settled not far from the center of the town, on the opposite bank of the river Jihlava. An extensive Jewish quarter (ghetto) with two synagogues, a school, a cemetery, and its own local administration gradually emerged there over the next two centuries. From the end of the eighteenth century, 260 families were allowed to live in Třebíč, making up 59  percent of the inhabitants of the town in 1799. In the second half of the nineteenth century, as many Jews moved to larger cities and to Vienna, the number of inhabitants in the Jewish town was reduced by more than half. Workers’ families from Třebíč and the surrounding area settled in the empty houses. Only in 1931 was the Jewish town merged with the town of Třebíč. The last inhabitants of the Třebíč ghetto were deported to Terezín and other concentration camps in May 1942. After the liberation the Jewish religious community was reestablished for a short time. The town district of the former Jewish ghetto was placed on the UNESCO World Heritage list in 2003.

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Table 22. Jews in Třebíč Ch. 1: 1500–1726 Ch. 2: 1726–1800 Ch. 3: 1800–1860 Ch. 4: 1860–1917

1573 8 fam.

1617 18 fam. 1786 1,760 pers.

1880 728 pers. in the Jewish political community; 182 in the Christian

1834 1,490 pers.

1890 637 pers. in the Jewish political community; 260 in the Christian

1921 405 pers. of Jewish religion; 243 of Jewish nationality

Ch. 6: 1938–45

1938 300 pers.

1724 1,000 pers.

1799 1,770 pers.

end of the 18th to mid-19th centuries 260 familiant families

Ch. 5: 1917–38

Ch. 7: 1945–2018

1667 38 houses

1848 1,612 pers.

1900 409 pers. in the Jewish political community; 254 in the Christian

1910 277 pers. in the Jewish political community; 241 in the Christian

1930 176 pers. of Jewish religion; 94 of Jewish nationality a

1942 transports: 1,371 pers. from the city and surrounding area

1945 63 pers.; 9 directly from the city returned

1946 0 pers.

a The number relates to people present in the city at the time of the census. Only 13 of those who indicated Jewish nationality were Czechoslovak citizens.

Uherský Brod / Ungarisch Brod The earliest reference to a Jewish settlement in Uherský Brod dates from 1470. Up to the middle of the sixteenth century, the Jews of Uherský Brod lived only in the suburbs, where the first synagogue was built and the earliest cemetery established. A hundred years later, forty houses were occupied in the Jewish ghetto inside the town, and this number continued to increase after the arrival of Jews expelled from Vienna in 1670. Despite losses due to the plague and military incursions, and with the limit on permitted Jewish families set at only 160, the Jewish community was one of the largest in Moravia in the eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth century. The Jews there accounted for almost a third of all the inhabitants of the town. The census results in subsequent decades (1880–1921, 1930) show a continuous decline in the membership of the Jewish community, likely due to Jews’ migration to larger towns. During the war almost eight hundred Jewish inhabitants of the town were deported, of whom

Demographic Supplement

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Table 23. Jews in Uherský Brod Ch. 1: 1500–1726

1595 5 fam.

1671 40 houses

Ch. 2: 1726–1800

1745 936 pers.; 241 fam.

end of the 18th century 160 familiant fam.

Ch. 3: 1800–1860

1834 827 pers.

1844 816 pers.

1857 1,068 pers.

Ch. 4: 1860–1917

1880 560 pers. in the Jewish political community; 313 in the Christian

1900 477 pers. in the Jewish political community; 348 in the Christian

1910 430 pers. in the Jewish political community; 288 in the Christian

Ch. 5: 1917–38

1921 718 pers. of Jewish religion; 534 of Jewish nationality

1930 529 pers. of Jewish religion; 407 of Jewish nationality

Ch. 6: 1938–45

1943 transports: 2,837 pers. from the city and surrounding area (800 from the city)

1945 197 pers. returned

Ch. 7: 1945–2018

1946 116 pers.

fewer than two hundred returned. The Jewish community in Uherský Brod was reestablished for a short time after the liberation.

Selected Bibliography A number of historical and contemporary works on the history of Jewish communities (studies, articles, and more recently some MA or PhD thesis), of varying academic standards, are available for further reference and analysis. The following bibliography therefore lists more general works on demographic development, statistics, and the history of Jewish communities. Sources Moravský zemský archiv v Brně [Moravian Provincial Archives in Brno]: Velkostatky, Tereziánský katastr, Moravské gubernium. Národní archiv [National Archives], Prague: Berní rula, Tereziánský katastr, Stará manipulace, Nová manipulace, Soupisy židů 1724–1811, České gubernium, Knihy židovských familiantů, Matriky židovských náboženských obcí v českých krajích, Židovské kontrolní matriky.

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Statistical Studies Bartoš, Josef, et al. Historický místopis Moravy a Slezska v letech 1848–1960, vols. 1–16 (Ostrava: Profil, 1966–2011). Brzobohatý, Jan and Stanislav Drkal, eds. Karolínský katastr slezský, vols. 1–2 (Prague: Archivní správa ministerstva vnitra České republiky, 1973). Československá statistika, part 1, vol. 9, part 1. Ed. Státní úřad statistický (Prague: Státní úřad statistický, 1924). Československý statistický věstník 5 (1924), 6 (1925), and 7 (1926). Chalupa, Aleš, ed. Tereziánský katastr český, vols. 1–3 (Prague: Archivní správa ministerstva vnitra České republiky, 1964–70). Dvořáček, František. Soupisy obyvatelstva v Čechách, na Moravě, ve Slezsku v letech 1754– 1921 (Prague: vlastním nákladem, knihtisk Melantrich, 1926). Ebelová, Ivana, ed. Soupis židovských rodin v Čechách z roku 1793, vols. 1–6 (Prague: Národní archiv, 2002–6). ———, ed. Soupis židovských rodin v Čechách z roku 1793, vol. 6, part 2: Dodatky a generální rejstřík (Prague: Národní archiv, 2006). ———, ed. Soupis židovských familiantů v Čechách z roku 1783, vols. 1–2 (Prague: Národní archiv, 2008–10). Kocman, Pavel. “Die Juden im ersten erhaltenen mährischen Kataster—Lahnregister.” Judaica Bohemiae 39 (2003), 104–92. ———. “Počty židovských domů na Moravě v roce 1667.” Židé a Morava 9 (2002), 7–26. Kuča, Karel. Města a městečka v Čechách, na Moravě a ve Slezsku, vols. 1–8 (Prague: Libri, 1996–2011). Lepař, Zdeněk. “Statistika Židů v Československé republice.” Sborník Československé společnosti zeměpisné 31, nos. 7–8 (1925), 258–64. Matějek, František, ed. Lánové rejstříky Brněnského kraje z let 1673–1675 (Prague: TEPS místního hospodářství, 1981). ———. Lánové rejstříky Hradišťského kraje z let 1669–1671 (Uherské Hradiště: Slovácké muzeum, 1984). Matějek, František, and Metoděj Zemek, eds. Lánové rejstříky Jihlavského a Znojemského kraje z let 1671–1678 (Prague: TEPS místního hospodářství, 1983). Matějek, František, Heda Minaříková, and Zdeněk Kašpar. Lánové rejstříky Olomouckého kraje z let 1675–1678 (Prague: Danal, 1994). Matušíková, Lenka. “Die Juden im ersten böhmischen Kataster 1653–1655.” Judaica Bohemiae 37.1 (2001), 5–91. Nesládková, Ludmila. “Moravští židé ve světle topografie Gregora Wolného.” Židé a Morava 12 (2005), 38–50. Petrusová, Lucie B., and Alexandr Putík, eds. Fase pražských židovských rodin z let 1748– 1749 (1751). Edice pramene k návratu z tereziánského vypovězení (Prague: Židovské muzeum v Praze, 2012). Radimský, Jiří. “Sčítání lidu na Moravě v roce 1763.” Sborník archivních prací 4.1 (1954), 141–97.

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———, ed. Tereziánský katastr moravský. Prameny z 2. poloviny 18. století k hospodářským dějinám Moravy, vols. 1–3 (Prague: Archivní správa ministerstva vnitra České republiky, 1962). Sander, Rudolf. “Počty Židů v Čechách v 18. a na počátku 19. století.” Sborník archivních prací 52.2 (2002), 521–91. Sekera, Václav. Obyvatelstvo českých zemí v letech 1754–1918 (Prague: Český statistický úřad, 1978). Statistický lexikon obcí v Čechách. Úřední seznam míst podle zákona ze dne 14. dubna 1920, čís. 266 Sb. zák. a nař., vydán Ministerstvem vnitra a Státním úřadem statistickým na základě výsledků sčítání lidu z 15. února 1921. 2d ed. (Prague: Státní úřad statistický, 1924). Statistický lexikon obcí v zemi Moravskoslezské. Úřední seznam míst podle zákona ze dne 14. dubna 1920, čís. 266 Sb. zák. a nař., vyd. Ministerstvem vnitra a Státním úřadem statistickým na základě výsledků sčítání lidu z 1. prosince 1930 (Prague: Orbis, 1935). Woitsch, Jiří et al., ed. Etnografický atlas Čech, Moravy a Slezska. vol. 5, Židovské obyvatelstvo v Čechách v letech 1792–1794 (Prague: Etnografický ústav Akademie věd České republiky, 2007).

Selected Literature Related to the Jewish Communities in This Demographic Study Bránský, Jaroslav. Židé v Boskovicích (Boskovice: Klub přátel Boskovic: Albert, 1999). Čapková, Kateřina. Czechs, Germans, Jews? National Identity and Jews in Bohemia (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2012). Cohen, Gary B. The Politics of Ethnic Survival: Germans in Prague, 1861–1914 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981). Dokoupilová, Marie. “Soupis židovských obyvatel Prostějova v 18. století.” Židé a Morava 8 (2002), 29–46. Dvořák, Jan. Židé v opavském Slezsku 1918–1945 (Opava: Slezská univerzita v Opavě, Filozoficko-přírodovědecká fakulta, Ústav historických věd, 2009). Fiedler, Jiří. Židovské památky v Čechách a na Moravě (Prague: Sefer, 1992). Gold, Hugo. Die Juden und Judengemeinden Böhmens in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart. Ein Sammelwerk (Brünn: Jüdischer Buch und Kunstverlag, 1934). ———. Die Juden und Judengemeinden Mährens in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart. Ein Sammelwerk (Brünn: Jüdischer Buch und Kunstverlag, 1929). Kadlec, Petr. “Národní identifikace Židů z českých zemí ve sčítání lidu mezi monarchií a republikou (1880–1921).” Židé a Morava 21 (2015), 27–47. Klenovský, Jaroslav. Židovské památky Moravy a Slezska/Jewish Monuments of Moravia and Silesia (Brno: ERA, Státní památkový ústav v Brně, 2001). Koeltzsch, Ines. Geteilte Kulturen. Eine Geschichte der tschechisch-jüdisch-deutschen Beziehungen in Prag (1918–1938) (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2012). ———.“Migration als Herausforderung. Die politischen Judengemeinden in Mähren und ihr ‘Niedergang’ um 1900.” Judaica Bohemiae 53.1 (2018), 9–38.

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Kordiovský, Emil et al., Moravští Židé v rakousko-uherské monarchii (1780–1918)/Mährische Juden in der österreichisch-ungarischen Monarchie (1780–1918) (Mikulov: Státní okresní archiv Břeclav, 2003). Kukánová, Zlatuše, and Lenka Matušíková. “Demografická struktura židovských náboženských obcí v severních Čechách.” Terezínské studie a dokumenty 2 (1997), 89–98. Machát, František. “Židé v Náchodě v 17. a 18. století.” In Sborník historických prací k 60. narozeninám J. Golla vydali jeho žáci (Prague: Nákladem historického klubu, 1906). Marada, Miroslav. “Demografický obraz židovské obce v Lipníku nad Bečvou a v Hranicích v polovině 17. století.” Židé a Morava 16 (2009), 28–33. Matušíková, Lenka. “History of the Jews and Jewish Communities in the Seventeenth to Nineteenth Centuries in Czech Popu lar Educational and Specialist Literature of the Last Decade.” Judaica Bohemiae 40.1 (2004), 277–90. Nezhodová, Soňa. Židovský Mikulov (Brno: Matice Moravská, 2006). Osterloh, Jörg. Nationalsozialistische Judenverfolgung im Reichsgau Sudetenland 1938–1945 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2006). Pěkný, Tomáš. Historie Židů v Čechách a na Moravě (Prague: Sefer, 1993). Peterka, Miroslav. “Prostějovské ghetto, jeho vzestup—soumrak—zánik.” Židé a Morava 1 (1995), 67–79. Rozkošná, Blanka, and Pavel Jakubec. Židovské památky Čech. Historie a památky židovského osídlení Čech/Jewish Monuments in Bohemia. History and Monuments of the Jewish Settlement in Bohemia (Brno: ERA, 2004). Rybár, Ctibor. Židovská Praha. Glosy k dějinám a kultuře. Průvodce památkami (Prague: TV Spektrum, Akropolis, 1991). Spyra, Janusz. “Źydzi w Opawie (do 1848 r.).” Opava. Sborník k dějinám města 2 (2000), 15–26. Spyra, Janusz, and Marcin Wodziński, eds. Židé ve Slezsku. Studie k dějinám židů ve Slezsku (Český Těšín: Muzeum Těšínska, 2001). Vobecká, Jana. Demographic Avant-Garde: Jews in Bohemia between the Enlightenment and the Shoah (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2013). Zadoff, Mirjam. Next Year in Marienbad: The Lost Worlds of Jewish Spa Culture. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012).

Note s

Introduction 1. Petr Maťa, “Die Habsburgermonarchie,” in Verwaltungsgeschichte der Habsburgermonarchie in der Frühen Neuzeit, vol. 1: Hof und Dynastie, Kaiser und Reich, Zentralverwaltungen, Kriegswesen und landesfürstliches Finanzwesen, ed. Michael Hochendlinger, Petr Maťa, and Thomas Winkelbauer (Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 2019), 29–62, here 34–39. We would also like to thank Petr Maťa for his valuable comments on this part of our introduction. 2. Robert John Weston Evans, The Making of the Habsburg Monarchy 1550–1700: An Interpretation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979). 3. For more details, see Pieter M. Judson, The Habsburg Empire: A New History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016). 4. Leonard V. Smith, Sovereignty at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). 5. The Czechoslovak government invested a significant amount of money and energy into burnishing Czechoslova kia’s democratic image. In many cases journalists from Jewish families willingly cooperated with the state administration on this state propaganda. For more on this, see Andrea Orzoff, Battle for the Castle: The Myth of Czechoslovakia in Europe, 1914–1948 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). 6. For more on the Czech-Slovak relations in the twentieth century, see Jan Rychlík, Češi a Slováci ve 20. století (1914–1992). Spolupráce a konflikty (Prague: Vyšehrad, 2012). 7. Monika Báar, Historians and Nationalism: East- Central Europe in the Nineteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). See also Balázs Trencsényi et al., A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe, vol. 1: Negotiating Modernity in the “Long Nineteenth Century” (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). This publication shows both how national movements of east-central Europe in the nineteenth century largely omitted Jews and also how recent scholarship still struggles to integrate Jews into the story of this region. 8. František Palacký, Dějiny národu českého w Čechách a w Morawě, 5 vols. (Prague: [various publishers], 1848–67); see online version at http://kramerius.nkp.cz/kramerius/MShowMonograph .do?id​=​20988 (accessed March 3, 2019). 9. See, for instance, Johann Franz von Herrmann, Ritter von Herrmannsdorf, Geschichte der Israeliten in Böhmen: Von den ältesten Zeiten bis zum Schlusse des Jahres 1813 (Vienna: C. Haas’sche Buchhandlung, 1819). 10. M. H. Friedländer, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Juden in Mähren (Brünn: Verlag von Bernhard Epstein, 1877); M. H. Friedländer, Materialien zur Geschichte der Juden in Böhmen (Brünn: Verlag von Bernhard Epstein, 1888); A. Stein, Die Geschichte der Juden in Böhmen nach amtlichen gedruckten und ungedruckten Quellen bearbeitet von (Brünn: Jüdischer Buch- und Kunstverlag, 1904); Gottlieb Bondy and Franz Dworský, eds., Zur Gechichte der Juden in Böhmen, Mähren und Schlesien von 906 bis 1620, 2 vols. (Prague: Gottlieb Bondy, 1906). 11. The distinction between “world” history told through the perspective of kings and emperors and a Jewish history structured around rabbis recalls the division established by the sixteenth-century

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Jewish polymath David Gans, in his 1598 work, Zemah David. In his case, Gans (and his readers) considered the volume on Jewish history to be unquestionably more impor tant than the one on the history of the wider world. 12. Many of the Jahrbuch’s nearly monograph-length articles continue to be of tremendous value. Among them, let us cite the following: Jaroslav Prokeš, “Der Antisemitismus der Behörden und das Prager Ghetto” (1929); Ludwig Singer, “Zur Geschichte der Toleranzpatente in den Sudetenländern” (1933); František Roubík, “Drei Beiträge zur Entwicklung der Judenemanzipation in Böhmen” (1933); Singer, “Zur Geschichte der Juden in Böhmen in den letzten Jahren Josefs II. und unter Leopold II.” (1934); Roubík, “Zur Geschichte der Juden in Böhmen in der ersten Hälfte des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts” (1934); and Roubík, “Von den Anfängen des Vereines für Verbesserung des israelitischen Kultus in Böhmen” (1938). 13. Hugo Gold, ed., Die Juden und Judengemeinden Mährens in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart. Ein Sammelwerk (Brünn: Jüdischer Buch- und Kunstverlag, 1929), 1. The original text:“die Erwägung, dass unsere Landgemeinden in kurzer Zeit durch Entvölkerung und Auflösung vollständig verschwinden werden und dass wir noch im letzten Augenblick alles daran setzen müssen, um wenigstens in Wort und Bild alles jüdische Volksgut zu retten und unseren Nachkommen zu erhalten.” 14. Hugo Gold, ed., Die Juden und Judengemeinden Böhmens in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart. Ein Sammelwerk (Brünn: Jüdischer Buch- und Kunstverlag, 1934). The entries differ widely in quality and methodology. Some are based on evidence from archival documents, others on an oral testimony only. Still, Gold’s volumes on Jewish communities in Moravia and Bohemia are an unparalleled source of information for anyone interested in the history of the Jews in these territories. 15. Guido Kisch, “Historia Judaica 1938–1961: An Historical Account and Reminiscences of the Retiring Editor,” in idem, Der Lebensweg eines Rechtshistorikers: Erinnerungen (Sigmaringen: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 1975), 221–32. 16. For more on this, see: Guido Kisch, “Jewish Historiography in Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia,” in The Jews of Czechoslovakia: Historical Studies and Surveys, vol. 1 (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America and Society for the History of Czechoslovak Jews, 1968), 1–11. 17. There were separate publication dates for each volume: 1968, 1971, and 1984. 18. Rudolf M. Wlaschek, Juden in Böhmen. Beiträge zur Geschichte des europäischen Judentums im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Munich: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1990; rev. 2d ed., 1997). 19. Wilma Iggers, ed., Die Juden in Böhmen und Mähren. Ein historisches Lesebuch (Munich: C. H. Beck 1986). An English translation has also appeared: Wilma Abeles Iggers, ed., The Jews of Bohemia and Moravia: A Historical Reader (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1992). 20. Tomáš Pěkný, Přehled židovské česky psané literatury (Prague: Alef, 1990). 21. Tomáš Pěkný, Historie Židů v Čechách a na Moravě (Prague: Sefer, 1993; 2d ed., 2001). 22. Hillel J. Kieval, The Making of Czech Jewry: National Conflict and Jewish Society in Bohemia, 1870–1918 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988). 23. See Hillel J. Kieval, Languages of Community: The Jewish Experience in the Czech Lands (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000); Mirjam Zadoff, Nächstes Jahr in Marienbad. Gegenwelten jüdischer Kulturen der Moderne (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck Ruprecht, 2007); Michael Laurence Miller, Rabbis and Revolution: The Jews of Moravia in the Age of Emancipation (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011); Michal Frankl, “Prag ist nunmehr antisemitisch”: Tschechischer Antisemitismus am Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts (Berlin: Metropol, 2011); Kateřina Čapková, Czechs, Germans, Jews? National Identity and the Jews of Bohemia (New York: Berghahn Books, 2012); Ines Koeltzsch, Geteilte Kulturen: Eine Geschichte der tschechisch-jüdisch-deutschen Beziehungen in Prag (1918–1938) (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2012); Martina Niedhammer, Nur eine “Geld-Emancipation”? Loyalitäten und Lebenswelten der Prager jüdischen Grossbürgertums 1800–1867 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck Ruprecht, 2013); Jan Láníček, Czechs, Slovaks and the Jews, 1938–48: Beyond Idealisation and Condemnation (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013); Dimitry Shumsky, Zweisprachigkeit und binationale Idee. Der Prager Zionismus 1900–1930 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck Ruprecht, 2013); Rachel L. Greenblatt, To Tell Their Children: Jewish Communal Memory in Early Modern Prague (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014); Tatjana Lichtenstein, Zionists in Interwar Czechoslovakia:

Notes to Pages 22–28

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Minority Nationalism and the Politics of Belonging (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2016); Joshua Teplitsky, Prince of the Press: How One Collector Built History’s Most Enduring and Remarkable Jewish Library (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2019).

Chapter 1 1. Abraham Levie and Shlomo Berger, Travels among Jews and Gentiles: Abraham Levie’s Travelogue Amsterdam 1764 (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 67. For a number of other travelers’ impressions of Jewish life in Prague in the early modern period, see Donatella Calabi, Dorothea Nolde, and Roni Weinstein, “The ‘City of Jews’ in Europe: The Conservation and Transmission of Jewish Culture,” in Cultural Exchange in Early Modern Europe, vol. 2: Cities and Cultural Exchange in Europe, 1400– 1700, ed. Donatella Calabi and Stephen Turk Christensen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 87–113. Since some Yiddish place names cannot be reliably matched with (still) existing places, we transcribed them into Latin characters based on Berger’s edition. 2. Levie and Berger, Travels among Jews and Gentiles, 69. 3. See Alexandr Putík, “The Hebrew Inscription on the Crucifix at Charles Bridge in Prague: The Case of Elias Backoffen and Berl Tabor in the Appellation Court,” Judaica Bohemiae 32 (1996), 26–103. 4. Yekele, originally of Rzeszów, was famous among Jews across the continent. For an account of his visit to perform in a synagogue in Metz in 1715, see Glikl: Zikhronot, 1691–1719, ed. Chava Turniansky (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center for Jewish History, Hebrew University, 2006), 586–91. 5. Levie and Berger, Travels among Jews and Gentiles, 69. This unusual practice was also remarked upon by Johann Jacob Schudt in his Judische Merckwurdigkeiten (Frankfurt, 1714), vol. 1, 218. See also David Ellenson, “ ‘A Disputed Precedent:’ The Prague Organ in Nineteenth- Century Central-European Legal Literature and Polemics,” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 40 (1995), 251–64. 6. Levie and Berger, Travels among Jews and Gentiles, 67–73. 7. Jonathan I. Israel, European Jewry in the Age of Mercantilism, 1550–1750, 3d ed. (London: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 1998), 4–28. 8. Marcin Wodziński, “Jews in Medieval Legnica—Their Location in the Municipal Area,” in Jews in Silesia, ed. Marcin Wodziński and Janusz Spyra (Kraków: Ksiegarnia akademicka, 2001), 17– 32. Marcin Wodziński, 2010, “Silesia,” YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, http://www .yivoencyclopedia.org /article.aspx /Silesia (accessed April 1, 2018). 9. Hillel J. Kieval, Languages of Community: The Jewish Experience in the Czech Lands (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 10–15; Michael Laurence Miller, Rabbis and Revolution: The Jews of Moravia in the Age of Emancipation (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011), 16–19. 10. Marie Buňatová, Die Prager Juden in der Zeit vor der Schlacht am Weißen Berg. Handel und Wirtschaftsgebaren der Prager Juden im Spiegel des Liber albus Judeorum 1577–1601 (Kiel: Solivagus, 2011), 14, 15. Käthe Spiegel, “Die Prager Juden zur Zeit des Dreissigjährigen Krieges,” in Die Juden in Prag: Bilder aus ihrer Tausendjährigen Geschichte: Festgabe der Loge Praga des Ordens B’nai B’rith zum Gedenktage ihres 25 Jährigen Bestandes, ed. Samuel Steinherz (Prague: Loge Praga des Ordens B’nai B’rith, 1927), 107–86. 11. Ruth Kestenberg-Gladstein, “Wirtschaftsgeschichte der böhmischen Landjuden des 18. Jahrhunderts,” Judaica Bohemiae 3.2 (1967), 127. Based on previous studies and censuses, Kieval estimates about 10,000 Jews in Prague, 32,000 Jews in the Bohemian countryside, 25,000 in Moravia in 1724. See Kieval, Languages of Community, 238. 12. Spiegel, “Die Prager Juden zur Zeit des Dreissigjährigen Krieges,” 107–86; Jaroslav Prokeš, “Der Antisemitismus der Behörden und das Prager Ghetto in nachweißenbergischer Zeit,” Jahrbuch der Gesellschaft für Geschichte der Juden in der Čechoslovakischen Republik (hereinafter JGGJČR) I (1929), 41–262; Kieval, Languages of Community, 18–22; Miller, Rabbis and Revolution, 20–22.

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13. Friedrich Battenberg, “Aus der Stadt auf das Land? Zur Vertreibung und Neuansiedlung der Juden im Heiligen Römischen Reich,” in Jüdisches Leben auf dem Lande: Studien zur deutsch-jüdischen Geschichte, ed. Monika Richarz and Reinhard Rürup (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997), 9–35. On the noble-owned towns of the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth and their impact on Jewish settlement and communal life, see Moshe J. Rosman, The Lords’ Jews: Magnate-Jewish Relations in the PolishLithuanian Commonwealth during the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990); Adam Teller, Kesef, Koah, Ve-Hashpa’ah: Ha-Yehudim be-ahuzot Beit Radziwill be-Lita be-meah ha-18 (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center for Jewish History, 2006). See also David Sorkin, “Beyond the East-West Divide: Rethinking the Narrative of the Jews’ Political Status in Europe, 1600– 1750,” Jewish History 24 (2010), 247–56. 14. Salo Wittmayer Baron, The Jewish Community: Its History and Structure to the American Revolution (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1942), vol. 1, ch. 7; Jacob Katz, Tradition and Crisis: Jewish Society at the End of the Middle Ages, trans. Bernard Dov Cooperman (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2000). 15. For the ramified structure of the Prague kehillah, see Alexandr Putík, “The Prague Jewish Community in the Late 17th and Early 18th Centuries,” Judaica Bohemiae 35 (2000), 63–90. 16. On early modern record-keeping, see Randolph Head, “Knowing Like a State: The Transformation of Political Knowledge in Swiss Archives, 1450–1770,” Journal of Modern History 75.4 (2003), 745–82. 17. Pinkas Trebitsch: https://web.nli.org.il/sites/nlis/en/pinkas. https://web.nli.org.il/sites/ NLI / English /digitallibrary / pages / viewer . aspx ? & presentorid​= ​M ANUSCRIPTS&docid​= ​P NX _ MANUSCRIPTS990047777890205171-1. [Accessed October 19, 2020]. More and more of these communal ordinances have recently been discovered, and they help us to understand the regional differences as well as similarities among European community policies; see Stefan Litt, ed., Jüdische Gemeindestatuten aus dem aschkenasischen Kulturraum 1650–1850, vol. 1 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014). 18. On the Jewish quarters of Moravia, see Miller, Rabbis and Revolution, 29–35. 19. For an introduction to these communities, see Tobias Jakobovits, “Jüdisches Gemeindeleben in Kolin (1763–1768),” JGGJČR 1 (1929), 332–68; Petr Kopička and Hana Legnerová, “Jews, Burghers and Lords: Social and Economic Relations in the Town of Roudnice nad Labem (Raudnitz), 1592–1619,” Judaica Bohemiae 41 (2005), 543; Moritz Grünwald, Jungbunzlauer Rabbiner (Prague: Schmelkes, 1888); Alexandr Putík, “The Tumult of Mladá Boleslav (Jungbunzlau, Bumsla) in the Messianic Year 5426/1666,” Judaica Bohemiae 34 (1999), 4–106; Tobias Jakobovits, “Die Brandkatastrophe in Nachod und die Austreibung der Juden aus Böhm.-Skalitz (1663–1705),” JGGJČR 9 (1938), 1–35. 20. Státní oblastní archiv Třeboň (SOA Třeboň), oddělení Český Krumlov, Schwarzenberský ústřední archiv, Frauenberg, A 5AJ 1a, Aufenthaltsanträge 1670–1794, unfol.; Jaroslav PolákRokycana, “Frauenberg,” in Die Juden und Judengemeinden Böhmens in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart, ed. Hugo Gold (Brno: Jüdischer Buch- und Kunstverlag, Max Hickl, 1934), 143. 21. Daniel J. Cohen, Die Landjudenschaften in Deutschland als Organe jüdischer Selbstverwaltung von der frühen Neuzeit bis ins neunzehnte Jahrhundert: Eine Quellensammlung (Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities; Göttingen: Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, 1996). For Lower Austria, see Barbara Staudinger, “Die Niederösterreichische ‘Landjudenschaft’: Innerjüdische Organisationsformen im regionalen Vergleich,” in Räume und Wege: Jüdische Geschichte im Alten Reich 1300–1800, ed. Rolf Kießling, Peter Rauscher, and Barbara Staudinger (Berlin: Akademie, 2007), 145–68. Ruth Kestenberg-Gladstein, “Differences of Estates within PreEmancipation Jewry: A Study in the Social Structure of Bohemian Provincial Jewry, Part II,” Journal of Jewish Studies 6.1 (1955), 35–49. 22. Friedrich Battenberg, “Die jüdischen Gemeinden und Landesjudenschaften im Heiligen Römischen Reich: Zwischen landesherrlicher Kontrolle und Autonomie,” in Selbstverwaltung in der Geschichte Europas in Mittelalter und Neuzeit, ed. Helmut Neuhaus (Berlin: Duncker & Humboldt, 2010), 101–42; Stefan Rohrbacher, “Stadt und Land: Zur ‘Inneren’ Situation der Süd- und

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Westdeutschen Juden in der Frühneuzeit,” in Jüdisches Leben auf dem Lande: Studien zur deutschjüdischen Geschichte, ed. Monika Richarz and Reinhard Rürup (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1999), 37–58. 23. Jakobovits, “Jüdisches Gemeindeleben in Kolin,” 336–40. 24. Miller, Rabbis and Revolution, 20ff. 25. On the supra-communal structure of the Jews of Poland, see Adam Teller, “Rabbis without a Function? The Polish Rabbinate and the Council of Four Lands in the 16th–18th Centuries,” in Jewish Religious Leadership: Image and Reality, ed. Jack Wertheimer (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 2004), 354–84. 26. Tobias Jakobovits, “Das Prager und Böhmische Landesrabbinat Ende des siebzehnten und Anfang des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts,” JGGJČR 5 (1933), 79–136. 27. Central Archives of the History of the Jewish People, HM2/3324, Jakobovits, “Das Prager und Böhmische Landesrabbinat Ende des siebzehnten und Anfang des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts,” 79–136. The creation of this regional rabbinate actually brought it closer in line with the general structure of the various districts (Kreise) of the Bohemian and Moravian territories. On these districts, see Národní archiv v Praze, Česká dvorská kancelář, sign. 2065, karton 912, ff. 82v. 28. Chava Fraenkel-Goldschmidt, The Historical Writings of Joseph of Rosheim (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 326–27. 29. Bernhard Brilling, “Die Prager jüdische Gemeinde als Fürsprecherin und Vertreterin des deutschen Judentums im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert,” Theokratia 3 (1973–75), 185–98; see particularly 189–95. 30. Putík, “The Prague Jewish Community,” esp. 68–98. 31. Jakobovits, “Das Prager und Böhmische Landesrabbinat Ende des siebzehnten und Anfang des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts,” 79–112. 32. See G. Wolf, “Zur Geschichte des jüdischen Gemeinwesens in Prag,” Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums 27.17 (1863), 255–57. Available in English translation as “The End of Jewish Democracy in 18th Century Prague,” https://fordham.bepress.com/emw/emw2015/emw2015/9/ (accessed June 14, 2019). 33. David B. Ruderman, Early Modern Jewry: A New Cultural History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), 23–55. 34. Cerman, Maur, and Zeitlhofer calculate the average demographic reduction in the Bohemian Lands at 28 percent. “Wirtschaft, Sozialstrukturen und Besitztransfer in frühneuzeitlichen gutsherrschaftlichen Gesellschaften in vergleichender Perspektive: Ergebnisse des Projekts ‘Soziale Strukturen in Böhmen,’ ” in Soziale Strukturen in Böhmen: Ein regionaler Vergleich von Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft in Gutsherrschaften, 16.–19. Jahrhundert, ed. Markus Cerman, Eduard Maur, and Hermann Zeitlhofer (Vienna: Oldenbourg, 2002), 267–71. Some areas, however, like Chejnow (Chýnov) in southern Bohemia, lost about half their population. Josef Grulich, “Die Herrschaft Chynov,” in Soziale Strukturen in Böhmen, 96–98. 35. Václav Bůžek and Petr Mat’a, “Wandlungen des Adels in Böhmen und Mähren im Zeitalter des ‘Absolutismus’ (1620–1740),” in Der europäische Adel im Ancien Régime: von der Krise der ständischen Monarchien bis zur Revolution (ca. 1600–1789), ed. Ronald  G. Asch (Vienna: Böhlau, 2001), 287–321, especially 295ff; Petr Maťa, “Der Adel Böhmens und Schlesiens in der Frühen Neuzeit,” in Adel in Schlesien: Herrschaft—Kultur— Selbstdarstellung, vol. 1, ed. Jan Harasimowicz and Matthias Weber (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2010), 223–62. 36. Ruth Kastenberg-Gladstein, “Wirtschaftsgeschichte der böhmischen Landjuden des 18. Jahrhunderts,” Judaica Bohemiae 3 (1967), 101–34. 37. Jonathan I. Israel, “Central European Jewry during the Thirty Years’ War,” Central European History 16.1 (1983), 3–30. 38. Shaul Stampfer, “What Actually Happened to the Jews of Ukraine in 1648?” Jewish History 17.2 (2003), 207–27. Clearly, the authorities were aware of the current immigration of Polish expellees, as can be seen in an imperial edict from February 1669. It was directed especially to the municipality of the Bohemian town of Jungbunzlau, which had a significant Jewish community and

318

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could therefore be an attractive destination for Polish migrants. See Moritz Grünwald, “Miscellen. 6. Beiträge zur Geschichte der Juden in Böhmen (1689–1734),” Zeitschrift für die Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland 2 (1889), 258–61; Markus J. Wenninger, Man bedarf keiner Juden mehr: Ursachen und Gründe ihrer Vertreibung aus den deutschen Reichsstädten im 15. Jahrhundert (Vienna: Böhlau, 1990). 39. Helmut Teufel, “Die Aufnahme niederösterreichischer Juden in Mähren nach der Vertreibung von 1670/71,” in Kontakte und Konflikte: Böhmen, Mähren und Österreich: Aspekte eines Jahrtausends gemeinsamer Geschichte, ed. Thomas Winkelbauer, Bořivoj Dostal, Falko Daim, and Thomás Krejčik (Horn: Waldviertler Heimatbund, 1993), 203–14. 40. Israel Halpern, Takkanot medinat Mehrin (410–508) (Jerusalem: Mekitse Nirdamim, 1952), #383. 41. SOA Třeboň, Český Krumlov, fond Frauenberg, A5AJ1a, fasciculum 1, sine folio, May 4, 1670. 42. Bernhard Wolff, “Geschichte der Juden in Böhm. Leipa,” in Die Juden und Judengemeinden Böhmens, ed. Gold, 49–55, here 52. 43. Jana Vobecká, Demographic Avant- Garde: Jews in Bohemia between the Enlightenment and the Shoah (Budapest: Central Eu ropean University Press, 2013), 44–47. See the chapter on regional and international trade by Prague Jews, which also covers rural Bohemian Jewish merchants, in Marie Buňatová, Die Prager Juden in der Zeit vor der Schlacht am Weißen Berg: Handel und Wirtschaftsgebaren der Prager Juden im Spiegel des Liber albus Judeorum 1577–1601 (Kiel: Solivagus, 2011), 182–217, 226–50. Cornelia Aust, The Jewish Economic Elite: Making Modern Europe (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2018), 15–27. 44. Maťa, “Der Adel Böhmens und Schlesiens in der Frühen Neuzeit,” 224–37. 45. Václav Bůžek, Pavel Král, and Zdeněk Vybíral, “Der Adel in den böhmischen Ländern 1526– 1740. Stand und Tendenzen der Forschung,” Anzeiger der philosophisch-historischen Klasse, 137.1 (2002), 55–98, see especially 74–79. 46. Maťa, “Der Adel Böhmens und Schlesiens in der Frühen Neuzeit,” 224–30. 47. Tobias Jakobovits, “Wer ist Abraham Aron Lichtenstadt?” Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums 74 (1930), 35–41. Josef Hráský, “Ein Beitrag zur Kenntnis der Judensiedlungen in Böhmen in den Jahren 1650 und 1674,” JGGJČR 9 (1938), 243–70. 48. Gustav Treixler, “Geschichte der Juden in Lichtenstadt, Neudek und St. Joachimstal,” in Die Juden und Judengemeinden Böhmens, ed. Gold, 378–82. 49. Jakobovits, “Wer ist Abraham Aron Lichtenstadt?” 35–41. 50. For regional differences of this model, see Markus Cerman, Eduard Maur, and Hermann Zeitlhofer, eds., Soziale Strukturen in Böhmen. 51. For the empire, see Torben Stretz, “Jüdisch-christliche Koexistenz in den Dörfern ausgewählter G rafschaften Frankens während des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts,” Aschkenas 21.1/2 (2013), 37–78; Michaela Schmölz-Häberlein, Juden in Bamberg (1633–1802/03): Lebensverhältnisse und Handlungsspielräume einer städtischen Minderheit (Würzburg: Ergon, 2014); Michael Brenner and Daniela Eisenstein, eds., Die Juden in Franken (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2012); Sabine Ullmann, Nachbarschaft und Konkurrenz: Juden und Christen in Dörfern der Markgrafschaft Burgau 1650 bis 1750 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1999). For Northern Austria, see Barbara Staudinger, “Gantze Dörffer voll Juden”: Juden in Niederösterreich 1496–1670 (Vienna: Mandelbaum, 2005); Peter R auscher, Langenlois—:‫ לוז‬Eine jüdische Landgemeinde in Niederösterreich im Zeitalter des Dreißigjährigen Krieges (Horn, Waidhofen/Thaya: Waldviertler Heimatbund, 2004). 52. Marie Buňatová, “Die wirtschaftlichen Beziehungen Prager Juden zum Adel in den böhmischen Ländern an der Wende vom 16. zum 17. Jahrhundert,” in Juden und ländliche Gesellschaft in Europa zwischen Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit (15.−17. Jahrhundert): Kontinuität und Krise, Inklusion und Exklusion in einer Zeit des Übergangs (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2016), 33–50; Bedřich Nosek, “Die jüdische Kultusgemeinde in Libeň (Lieben) im 16. bis 19. Jahrhundert,” Judaica Bohemiae 16.2 (1980), 103–18; Ruth Kestenberg-Gladstein, “Wirtschaftsgeschichte der böhmischen Landjuden des 18. Jahrhunderts,” Judaica Bohemiae 3.2 (1967), 101–34, here 112–14. Helmut Teufel, Zur

Notes to Pages 37–40

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politischen und sozialen Geschichte der Juden in Mähren vom Antritt der Habsburger bis zur Schlacht am Weissen Berg (1526–1620) (Erlangen: Hogl, 1971), 166–92. 53. Jörg Konrad Hoensch, Geschichte Böhmens: Von der slavischen Landnahme bis ins 20. Jahrhundert (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1987), 176–81, 213–19. 54. For the earlier period, see Hanna Wegrzybej, “The Jews’ Role in the Polish Rural Economy and Its Evolution, c. 1400–1700,” in Juden und ländliche Gesellschaft in Europa zwischen Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit (15.−17. Jahrhundert): Kontinuität und Krise, Inklusion und Exklusion in einer Zeit des Übergangs (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2016), 19–32; Hillel Levine, Economic Origins of Antisemitism: Poland and Its Jews in the Early Modern Period (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1991); Gershon David Hundert, Jews in Early Modern Poland (London: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 1997). For an overview of the economic history of early modern Polish Jews, see Jolanta N. Komornicka, “The Jews in the Medieval Polish Economy: Some Thoughts on the Historiography of the Twentieth Century,” History Compass 7.3 (2009), 644–58. 55. Wegrzybej, “The Jews’ Role in the Polish Rural Economy,” 23–25; Glenn Dynner, “Legal Fictions: The Survival of Rural Jewish Tavernkeeping in the Kingdom of Poland,” Jewish Social Studies 16.2 (2010), 28–66; Moshe Rosman, The Lords’ Jews: Magnate-Jewish Relations in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth during the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990); Judith Kalik, “Jewish Leaseholders (Arendarze) in 18th Century Crown Poland,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 54 (2003), 229–40; Ruth Kestenberg-Gladstein, “Differences of Estates within Pre-Emancipation Jewry: A Study in the Social Structure of Bohemian Provincial Jewry, Part 2,” Journal of Jewish Studies 6.1 (1955), 35–49. 56. Kestenberg-Gladstein, “Wirtschaftsgeschichte der böhmischen Landjuden des 18. Jahrhunderts,” 106. 57. Mark Wischnitzer, “Origins of the Jewish Artisan Class in Bohemia and Moravia, 1500– 1648,” Jewish Social Studies 16.4 (1954), 335–50. 58. Buňatová, Die Prager Juden in der Zeit vor der Schlacht am Weißen Berg, 182–217, 226–50. 59. See Józef Gierowski, “Die Juden in Polen im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert und ihre Beziehungen zu den deutschen Städten von Leipzig bis Frankfurt a. M.,” in Die wirtschaftlichen und kulturellen Beziehungen zwischen den jüdischen Gemeinden in Polen und Deutschland vom 16. bis zum 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Karl Grözinger (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1992), 3–19. Frankfurt am Main, for example, still elected Polish rabbis to their rabbinic posts in the eighteenth century. The attempt of the Wertheimer Foundation in Vienna to bring in a rabbi from Bohemia for the Frankfurt Clauss Yeshiva provoked a serious conflict in the community leadership in 1787. See Verena Kasper-Marienberg, “Vor Euer Kayserlichen Mayestät Justiz-Thron”: Die Frankfurter jüdische Gemeinde am Reichshofrat in josephinischer Zeit (1765–1790) (Innsbruck: Studienverlag, 2012), 144–45. 60. Levie and Berger, Travels among Jews and Gentiles, 71. 61. Alexander Marx, “A Seventeenth-Century Autobiography: A Picture of Jewish Life in Bohemia and Moravia: From a Manuscript in the Jewish Theological Seminary,” Jewish Quarterly Review 8 (1918): 298–302. Place-name reproduction follows Marx’s transcription. 62. Gutmann Klemperer, “The Rabbis of Prague,” Historia Judaica 12–13 (1950–51), 33–66; 143– 52; 155–82. 63. See Austerlitz’s published sermon from 1715 in The University of Oxford’s Bodleian Libraries, Oppenheim collection, printed item Opp. 4o 325. 64. Halpern, Takkanot medinat Mehrin, #170. 65. See the discussions in Zevi Hirsch b. Jacob Ashkenazi, She’elot ve-teshuvot Hakham Tsvi (Amsterdam, 1712), #63; David Oppenheim, She’elot ve-teshuvot Nishʼal David, vol. 2, ed. Isaac Dov Feld (Jerusalem: Mekhon Hatam Sofer, 1971) Even ha-Ezer #6; Jacob b. Josef Rzeszów, She’elot veteshuvot shevut Ya’akov, vol. 1 (Halle, 1707), #95–97; Shmuel b. Elkanah of Altona, Mekom Shmu’el (Altona, 1738), # 84. 66. Joseph M. Davis, “Concepts of Family and Friendship in the 1619 Yiddish Letters of Prague Jews,” Judaica Bohemiae 49/1 (2014), 27–58.

320

Notes to Pages 40–44

67. Alfred Landau and Bernhard Wachstein, eds., Jüdische Privatbriefe aus dem Jahre 1619 [. . .] (Vienna: Braumüller, 1911), 3A. 68. Ibid., 7A. 69. Ibid., 12. 70. Menachem Friedman, “Mikhtave hamlatsah le-kabtsanayim—‘Ketavim’: Li-ve’ayat haNavadim be-Germaniyah be-me’ah ha-18,” Michael: On the History of the Jews in the Diaspora 2 (1973), 34–51. 71. Hillel J. Kieval, “Jewish Prague, Christian Prague, and the Castle in the City’s ‘Golden Age,’” Jewish Studies Quarterly 18.2 (2011), 202–15. 72. Jiřina Šedinová, “Kara, Avigdor,” trans. Stephen Hattersley, YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org /article.aspx /Kara _ Avigdor (accessed February 4, 2018). 73. Rachel L. Greenblatt, To Tell Their Children: Jewish Communal Memory in Early Modern Prague (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014), 15. 74. See the recent collection of essays in Elchanan Reiner, ed., Maharal: Aḳkdamot: Pirke hayim, mishnah, hashpaʻah (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center for Jewish History, 2015). 75. On Rudolfine Prague, see R. J. W. Evans, Rudolf II and His World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973). 76. David Gans, Tzemah David, vol. 1, Frankfurt am Main, 1692, 46r. More on Maharal, see Jacob Katz, Exclusiveness and Tolerance: Jewish- Gentile Relations in Medieval and Early Modern Times (London: Oxford University Press, 1961), 138–42; Elliot  R. Wolfson, Venturing Beyond: Law and Morality in Kabbalistic Mysticism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 116–21. 77. Joanna Weinberg, “A Humanist in the Kloyz: New Perspectives on the Maharal of Prague and Jacques Bongars,” Journal of the History of Ideas 77.4 (2016), 521–37. 78. Halpern, Takkanot medinat Mehrin (410–508), #180, 272. On the prohibition of drinking non-Jewish wine, see Katz, Exclusiveness and Tolerance. 79. David B. Ruderman, Jewish Thought and Scientific Discovery in Early Modern Europe (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995). 80. For studies on Gans, see a recent special issue, “David Gans (1541–1613): A Reconsideration,” Judaica Bohemiae 51.1 (2016). 81. Tamar Salmon-Mack, “Krochmal, Menaḥem Mendel ben Avraham,” YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe (2010), http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org /article.aspx /Krochmal _ Menahem _ Mendel _ben _ Avraham (accessed February 15, 2018). 82. Gutmann Klemperer, “The Rabbis of Prague,” Historia Judaica 12–13 (1950–51), 33–66, 143– 52, 155–82. On Heller, see Joseph M. Davis, Yom-Tov Lipmann Heller: Portrait of a SeventeenthCentury Rabbi (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2004). On Oppenheim, see Joshua Teplitsky, Prince of the Press: How One Collector Built History’s Most Enduring and Remarkable Jewish Library (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2019). 83. Frauke von Rohden, “Rivka bas Me’ir Tiktiner,” Jewish Women’s Archive, https://jwa .org /encyclopedia /article/tiktinerrivke-bas-meir (accessed June 20, 2019). An English translation of the text is available in Frauke von Rohden, ed., Meneket Rivkah: A Manual of Wisdom and Piety for Jewish Women, trans. Samuel Spinner (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2008). 84. Olga Sixtová, “Jewish Printers and Printing Presses in Prague, 1512–1670 (1672),” in Hebrew Printing in Bohemia and Moravia, ed. Olga Sixtová (Prague: Academia/Jewish Museum, 2012), 33–74. 85. Olga Sixtová, “The Beginnings of Prague Hebrew Typography, 1512–1569,” in Hebrew Printing in Bohemia and Moravia, 75–121; Petr Voit, “Ornamentation of Prague Hebrew Books during the First Half of the 16th Century as Part of Bohemian Book Design,” in ibid., 123–51; Lenka Veselá, “Hebrew Typography at Non-Jewish Bohemian Printing Houses during the 16th and 17th Centuries,” in ibid., 165–76. 86. Marvin J. Heller, “Often Overlooked: Hebrew Printing in Prostejov (Prossnitz),” in Further Studies in the Making of the Early Hebrew Book (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 117–27; Andrea Jelínková, “He-

Notes to Pages 46–51

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brew Printing in Moravia at the Beginning of the 17th Century,” in Hebrew Printing in Bohemia and Moravia, 153–64. 87. On the role of censorship as both repressive and permissive, see Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, The Censor, the Editor, and the Text: The Catholic Church and the Shaping of the Jewish Canon in the Sixteenth Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007). 88. Quoted in Putík, “Censorship of Hebrew Books in Prague,” 200. 89. Davis, Yom-Tov Lipmann Heller, 136–55. 90. On the complex process of re-Catholicizing the Bohemian Lands after the Battle of White Mountain, see Howard Louthan, Converting Bohemia: Force and Persuasion in the Catholic Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). 91. Alexandr Putík, “The Censorship of Hebrew Books in Prague, 1512–1670 (1672),” in Hebrew Printing in Bohemia and Moravia, 187–214. 92. Gerson Wolf, “Auto Da Fé Jüdischer Bücher in Prag 1714,” Zeitschrift für Hebraeische Bibliographie 4 (1863), 35–44. 93. See Joshua Teplitsky, “Jewish Money, Jesuit Censors, and the Habsburg Monarchy: Politics and Polemics in Early Modern Prague,” Jewish Social Studies 19.3 (2014), 109–38. 94. Putík, “The Prague Jewish Community in the Late 17th and Early 18th Centuries,” 37–63. 95. Elisheva Carlebach, The Death of Simon Abeles: Jewish- Christian Tension in SeventeenthCentury Prague, Third Annual Herbert Berman Memorial Lecture (New York: Center for Jewish Studies, Queens College, CUNY, 2001); Louthan, Converting Bohemia, 300–316. 96. On Eybeschütz’s role in the Talmud and censorship of Jewish books, see Paweł Maciejko, “The Rabbi and the Jesuit: On Rabbi Jonathan Eibeschütz and Father Franciscus Haselbauer Editing the Talmud,” Jewish Social Studies 20.2 (2014), 147–84. 97. Matt Goldish, “Jews and Habsburgs in Prague and Regensburg: On the Political and Cultural Significance of Solomon Molkho’s Relics,” in Jewish Culture in Early Modern Europe: Essays in Honor of David B. Ruderman, ed. Richard I. Cohen, Natalie B. Dohrmann, Adam Shear, and Elchanan Reiner (Cincinnati, OH: Hebrew Union College Press, 2014), 28–38. 98. Jacob Tausk (Taussig), Ayn Shayne Naye Lid fun Mashiah (Prague, 1666). 99. Gershom Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi: The Mystical Messiah, 1626–1676 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973), 561–65. 100. On the Sabbatian controversies, see Elisheva Carlebach, The Pursuit of Heresy: Rabbi Moses Hagiz and the Sabbatian Controversies (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), 172–94. 101. Miller, Rabbis and Revolution, 29–35. 102. JMP, Ms. 120064 (“Kopialbuch of David Oppenheim”), §106 (July 27, 1702). 103. Megillat Shmuel, ed. Aron Freimann, vol. 15, Kobez Al Jad (Berlin: Mekize Nirdamim, 1899), 3. On regulations both by Christian and by Jewish civil and religious leaders to limit interfaith contact elsewhere in Europe, see Magda Teter, “ ‘There Should Be No Love between Us and Them’: Social Life and the Bounds of Jewish and Canon Law in Early Modern Poland,” Polin 22 (2010), 249–70. On Jewish Town spaces, see Benjamin Ravid, “All Ghettos Were Jewish Quarters but Not All Jewish Quarters Were Ghettos,” Jewish Culture and History 10.2–3 (2008), 5–24; Calabi, Nolde, and Weinstein, “The ‘City of Jews’ in Europe.” 104. Marx, “Seventeenth-Century Autobiography,” 294. 105. Levie and Berger, Travels among Jews and Gentiles, 71. 106. Wilfried Brosche, “Das Ghetto von Prag,” in Juden in den böhmischen Ländern, ed. Ferdinand Seibt (Vienna: Oldenbourg, 1983), 101–4; Hana Volavková, The Pinkas Synagogue: A Memorial of the Past and of Our Days (Prague: Státní pedagogické nakladatelství, 1955). 107. Fynes Moryson, Shakespeare’s Europe: A Survey of the Condition of Europe at the End of the 16th Century, ed. Charles Hughes, 2d ed. (New York: Blom, 1967 [1617]), 491–93. 108. Greenblatt, To Tell Their Children, 30–31. 109. Levie and Berger, Travels among Jews and Gentiles, 69; Greenblatt, To Tell Their Children, 29. 110. Greenblatt, To Tell Their Children, 23–32. See also Richard I. Cohen, “Creating an Elite Norm of Behaviour— Court Jews as Patrons and Collectors of Art,” in Hofjuden: Ökonomie und

322

Notes to Pages 51–55

Interkulturalität: Die jüdische Wirtschaftselite im 18. Jahrhundert, ed. Friedrich Battenberg and Rotraud Ries (Hamburg: Christians Verlag, 2002), 143–53. 111. Greenblatt, To Tell Their Children, 64–66. 112. Wolff, “Geschichte der Juden in Böhm. Leipa,” 51. 113. SOA Třeboň, oddělení Český Krumlov, Schwarzenberský ústřední archiv, Frauenberg, A 5AJ 1a, balíček 39, appendix A, Architekturskizze, Prag, 22 April 1701, unfol. 114. For similar experiences in the German lands, see Stefan Rohrbacher, “Stadt und Land: Zur ‘Inneren’ Situation der Süd- und Westdeutschen Juden in der Frühneuzeit,” in Jüdisches Leben auf dem Lande. Studien zur deutsch-jüdischen Geschichte, ed. Monika Richarz und Reinhard Rürup (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1999), 38–42. 115. David b. Abraham Oppenheim, She’elot ve-teshuvot nish’al David, ed. Yitzchok Dov Feld (Jerusalem: Mekhon Hatam Sofer, 1971), vol. 1, Orah hayyim, #5. 116. Pinhas Katzenellenbogen, Yesh Manhilin, ed. Isaac Dov Feld (Jerusalem: Mekhon Hatam Sofer, 1986), ch. 96. 117. Cited in Greenblatt, To Tell Their Children, 28. 118. Halpern, Takkanot medinat Mehrin, #27. 119. See the documents quoted in Max Freudenthal, “David Oppenheim als Mährischer Landrabbiner,” Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums 10.5–6 (1902), 269. 120. Halpern, Takkanot medinat Mehrin, #343; see also CAHJP CS 22, which can also be found in Jerold C. Frakes, Early Yiddish Texts, 1100–1750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 831–33. 121. Halpern, Takkanot medinat Mehrin, #247, 249. 122. Simon Adler, “Das älteste Judicial-Protokoll des jüdischen Gemeinde-Archives in Prag (1682),” JGGJČR 3 (1931), 218; Brosche, “Das Ghetto von Prag,” 103. 123. Halpern, Takkanot medinat Mehrin, #467. See also Barbara Staudinger, “ ‘Gelangt an eur kayserliche Majestät mein allerunderthenigistes Bitten.’ Handlungsstrategien der jüdischen Elite am Reichshofrat im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert,” in Hofjuden und Landjuden: Jüdisches Leben in der Frühen Neuzeit, ed. Sabine Hödl, Barbara Staudinger, and Peter Rauscher (Berlin: Philo Verlag, 2004), 143–83. 124. David Oppenheim, She’elot ve-teshuvot nish’al David, vol. 1, Yoreh De’ah, #27. 125. Arno Pařík, “Gardens of Life,” in Old Bohemian and Moravian Jewish Cemeteries, ed. Petr Ehl, Arno Pařík, and Jiří Fiedler (Prague: Paseka, 1991), 14. 126. Ibid., 6. 127. Greenblatt, To Tell Their Children, 47–55. 128. Ibid. 129. Pařík, “Gardens of Life,” 17–19. 130. For the Moravian burial societies, see Halpern, Takkanot medinat Mehrin, #244. See also Sylvie-Ann Goldberg, Crossing the Jabbok: Illness and Death in Ashkenazi Judaism in Sixteenththrough Nineteenth- Century Prague (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997). 131. Halpern, Takkanot medinat Mehrin, #175; Reuven Ha-Yisraeli, “Toledot Kehilat Prag beshanim 1680–1730. Le-or ha-’Kopi’ar’ shel R’ David Oppenheim” (master’s thesis, Tel-Aviv University, 1965), 120–21. 132. See Debra Kaplan, “ ‘To Immerse Their Wives’: Communal Identity and the ‘Kahalishe’ Mikveh of Altona,” AJS Review 362 (2012), 257–79. 133. Brosche, “Das Ghetto von Prag,” 105. 134. Wolff, “Geschichte der Juden in Böhm. Leipa,” 51. 135. Polák-Rokycana, “Geschichte Der Juden in Březnice (Judenstadt Lokschan),” in Die Juden und Judengemeinden Böhmens, ed. Gold, 66. 136. Garküchen are mostly documented for the German lands, but they were a common occurrence in the Bohemian Lands as well. For Moravia, see the legal aspects in Hieronymus von Scari, Systematische Darstellung der in Betreff der Juden in Mähren und im k. k. Antheile Schlesiens erlassenen Gesetze und Verordnungen (Brünn: Seidel, 1835), 118–19. See also the forthcoming

Notes to Pages 55–61

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article by Debra Kaplan und Verena Kasper-Marienberg, “Nourishing a Community: Food, Hospitality and Jewish Communal Spaces in Early Modern Frankfurt.” AJS Review, forthcoming. 137. Rohrbacher, “Stadt und Land,” 42–44. The small Bohemian community of Neuhaus (Jindřichův Hradec) had a shohet who also served as hazzan and teacher. See Michael Rachmuth, “Geschichte der Juden in Neuhaus,” in Die Juden und Judengemeinden Böhmens, ed. Gold, 448. 138. Moritz Mandl, “Geschichte der Juden in Brandeis a. d. E. und Elbekosteletz,” in Die Juden und Judengemeinden Böhmens, ed. Gold, 56–57. 139. Greenblatt, To Tell Their Children, 31–32. 140. Levie and Berger, Travels among Jews and Gentiles, 67–68. 141. Maoz Kahana, “Shabat be-vet ha-kafe shel Kehilat Kodesh Prag,” Zion 78.1 (2013), 5–50; Joshua Teplitsky, “Jewish Money, Jesuit Censors, and the Habsburg Monarchy: Politics and Polemics in Early Modern Prague,” Jewish Social Studies 19.3 (2014), 109–38. 142. Halpern, Takkanot medinat Mehrin (410–508), #280. 143. Ibid., #279. On mutual attempts by Jews and Christians to distance their constituents from each other, see Teter, “ ‘There Should Be No Love between Us and Them’ ”; Debra Kaplan, “ ‘Because Our Wives Trade and Do Business with Our Goods’: Gender, Work, and Jewish-Christian Relations,” in New Perspectives on Jewish- Christian Relations: In Honor of David Berger, ed. Elisheva Carlebach and Jacob J. Schacter (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 241–61. 144. Levie and Berger, Travels among Jews and Gentiles, 70. As Berger notes, Jewish commercial activity was heavi ly taxed. 145. Ruth Kestenberg- Gladstein, “Wirtschaftsgeschichte der böhmischen Landjuden des 18. Jahrhunderts,” Judaica Bohemiae 3.2 (1967), 101–34, here 113. 146. Greenblatt, To Tell Their Children, 89. 147. Levie and Berger, Travels among Jews and Gentiles, 69. On the par ticu lar dress regulations, see Jakobovits, “Die Judenabzeichen in Böhmen,” JGGJČR 3 (1931), 5–44. 148. Levie and Berger, Travels among Jews and Gentiles, 70. 149. Hillel Kieval, “The Lands Between: The Jews of Bohemia, Moravia and Slovakia to 1918,” in Where Cultures Meet: The Story of the Jews of Czechoslovakia, ed. Natalia Berger (Tel Aviv: Beth Hatefutsoth/Ministry of Defence, 1990), 23–51. 150. “Beschraybung fun Ashkenaz und Polak” [Prague?, c. 1675–80?], held in the Bodleian Library as Opp. 8o1061. See Max Weinreich, “Zvey Yidishe Shpaetlider Oyf Yidin,” Filologishe Shriften 3 (1929), 536–54; Ewa Geller, “Aschkenas und Polak: Ein Jahrhunderte waehrender Antagonismus, exemplarisch dargestellt an einem jiddischen Streitlied aus dem 17. Jahrhundert,” in Jewish Lifeworlds and Jewish Thought (Festschrift Presented to Karl E. Grözinger on the Occasion of His 70th Birthday), ed. Nathanael Riemer (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2012), 357–68. 151. S.  H. Lieben, “Megillath Samuel,” JGGJČR 9 (1938), 307–42; Greenblatt, To Tell Their Children, 84–90. 152. Quoted in Davis, Yom-Tov Lipmann Heller, 134. 153. Johann Jacob Schudt, Jüdisches Franckfurter und Prager Freuden-Fest wegen der höchstglücklichen Geburth des Durchlauchtigsten Kayserlichen Erb-Printzens [. . .] (Frankfurt am Main: Matthias Andreae, 1716), 42–71. 154. For a full description and interpretation of the procession, see Rachel Greenblatt, “On Jewish Prague in the Age of Schudt’s Frankfurt: Two Jewish Towns in Celebration on the Birth of an Heir to the Habsburg Throne (1716),” Frankfurter Judaistische Beiträge 40 (2015), 239–57.

Chapter 2 1. Ezekiel Landau, Sefer Noda’ bihudah, mahadura tineyana (New York: Halakha berura, 1960), hoshen mishpat, no. 41. David b. Menahem Mendel Deutsch (1755–1831), also known as David Kittsee, was later a rabbi in Jamnitz (Jemnice), Frauenkirchen, Dunaszerdahely (Dunajská Streda), and

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Waag-Neustadtl (Nové Mesto nad Váhom). His father, Menahem Mendel Deutsch, was district rabbi (Kreisrabbiner) in Tabor (Tábor), Bohemia. See Louis Ginzberg, “David B. Menachem Mandel,” Jewish Encyclopedia 4 (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1906), 547; Rudolf Hruschka, “Geschichte der Juden in Jamnitz,” in Juden und Judengemeinden Mährens in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart, ed Hugo Gold (Brünn: Jüdischer Buch- und Kunstverlag, 1929), 257, 265. 2. Ivo Cerman, “Familiants Laws,” YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe (New Haven, CT, Yale University Press: 2008), 493–94; Michael L. Miller, Rabbis and Revolution: The Jews of Moravia in the Age of Emancipation (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press: 2011), 35–40. 3. On dina de-malkhuta dina, see Gil Graff, Separation of Church and State: Dina de-Malkhuta Dina in Jewish Law, 1750–1848 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1985). 4. R. J. W. Evans, “The Habsburg Monarchy and Bohemia, 1526–1848,” in Austria, Hungary, and the Habsburgs: Central Europe, c. 1683–1867, ed. R. J. W. Evans (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 89–91. 5. Ezekiel Landau, “Derush 39 le-shabat ha-gadol,” in Derushe ha-Tsalah (Jerusalem: Biferush uberemez, 1966), 105–7. The sermon was delivered on Shabbat Hagadol, March 23, 1782 (8 Nissan 5542). A translation of this sermon can be found in Marc Sapperstein, ed., Jewish Preaching, 1200– 1800: An Anthology (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989), 361–73. Translations here are my own. See also Hillel J. Kieval, “The Unforeseen Consequences of Cultural Resistance: Haskalah and State-Mandated Reform in the Bohemian Lands,” Jewish Culture and History 13.2–3 (2012), 1–16. 6. Miller, Rabbis and Revolution, 35; M. J. Friedländer, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Juden in Mähren (Brünn: Rudolf M. Rohrer, 1876), 27; M. H. Friedländer, Materialien zur Geschichte der Juden in Böhmen (Brünn: Bernhard Epstein, 1888), 72. 7. Ezekiel Landau, “Derush 39 le-shabat ha-gadol,” 105. Translation adapted from Marc Sapperstein, ed., Jewish Preaching, 361–73. 8. Robert Kann, History of the Habsburg Empire 1526–1918 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), 45; Christopher R. Friedrichs, “The War and German Society,” in The Thirty Years’ War, ed. Geoffrey Parker (London: Routledge, 2007), 186–92. 9. Miller, Rabbis and Revolution, 20–21. 10. Jaroslav Miller, Urban Societies in East- Central Europe, 1500–1700 (Abingdon: Ashgate, 2008), 25–26. The population of Prague was between 53,600 and 70,000 in 1600 and between 26,450 and 30,300 in 1650. 11. David Kaufmann, Die letzte Vertreibung der Juden aus Wien und Niederösterreich: Ihre Vorgeschichte (1625–1670) und ihre Opfer (Budapest: Országos rabbiképző intézet, 1888), 166–90; Moses Shulvass, From East to West: The Western Migration of Jews from Eastern Europe during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Detroit, MI: Wayne University Press, 1971), 39–40. 12. Kaufmann, Die letzte Vertreibung, 166; quoted in Miller, Rabbis and Revolution, 25. 13. As Hillel J. Kieval has noted, most of the localities in question were owned by the nobility; see Hillel J. Kieval, Languages of Community: The Jewish Experience in the Czech Lands (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 20. 14. Jaroslav Prokeš, “Der Antisemitismus der Behörden und das Prager Ghetto in nachweissenbergischer Zeit,” Jahrbuch der Gesellschaft für die Geschichte der Juden in der Čechoslovakischen Republik (hereinafter JGGJČR) 1 (1929), 212. 15. Ibid., 215–16. 16. Ibid., 211. 17. Miller, Rabbis and Revolution, 27. 18. František Roubík, “Die Judensiedlungen in Böhmen auf den Ortsplänen vom Jahre 1727,” JGGJČR 3 (1931), 284. 19. Miller, Rabbis and Revolution, 29; Roubík, “Die Judensiedlungen in Böhmen,” 287. 20. François Guesnet, “Textures of Intercession—Rescue Efforts for the Jews of Prague, 1744/1748,” Jahrbuch des Simon-Dubnow-Instituts 4 (2005), 361. 21. Josef Bergl, “Das Exil der Prager Judenschaft von 1745–1748,” JGGJČR 1 (1929), 263–331; Baruch Mevorah, “Ma’ase hishtadlut be-Eropa le-meni’at girusham shel Yehude Bohemia ve-Moravia,”

Notes to Pages 68–75

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Zion 28 (1963), 125–64; Stefan Plaggenborg, “Maria Theresia und die böhmischen Juden,” Bohemia 39.1 (1998), 1–16; François Guesnet, “Negotiating Under Duress: The Expulsion of Salzburg Protestants (1732) and the Jews of Prague (1744),” in Negotiating Religion: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives, ed. François Guesnet, Cécile Laborde, and Lois Lee (London: Routledge, 2017), 47. 22. Guesnet, “Textures of Intercession,” 357. 23. Quoted in Wilma Abeles Iggers, ed., The Jews of Bohemia and Moravia. A Historical Reader (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1992), 34–35. 24. Bergl, “Das Exil der Prager Judenschaft”; Hana Legnerová, “Das Exil der Prager Juden auf der Herrschaft Rothenhaus (Červený Hrádek) in den Jahren 1745–1748,” Judaica Bohemiae 38 (2002), 48–72. 25. Quoted in Guesnet, “Negotiating Under Duress,” 59. 26. Ibid., 55; Miller, Rabbis and Revolution, 41–42. 27. Tobias Jakobovits, “Das Prager und Böhmische Landesrabbinat, Ende des siebzehnten und Anfang des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts,” JGGJČR 5 (1933): 79–136. 28. General-Polizei-Prozess- und Kommerzial- Ordnung für die Judenschaft des Markgrafthums Mähren. See Gerson Wolf, Die alten Statuten der jüdischen Gemeinden in Mähren (Vienna: Höldner, 1880), and Müller, Urkundliche Beiträge zur Geschichte der mähr. Judenschaft im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert (Olmütz: Otto Harassowitz, 1903), 81–102. 29. Müller, Urkundliche Beiträge, 97. 30. Jana Vobecká, Demographic Avant- Garde. Jews in Bohemia between the Enlightenment and the Shoah (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2013), 45. 31. Miller, Rabbis and Revolution, 35–40. 32. This section is largely taken from Miller, Rabbis and Revolution, 37. 33. Michaela Kral, “Auswirkungen des Familiantengesetzes auf eine jüdische Familie in der südböhmischen Stadt Patzau zwischen 1726 und 1849: Eine Fallstudie,” Zeitschrift für OstmitteleuropaForschung 53 (2004), 87. 34. Karel Jugl, cited in Pavel Sládek, “Early Modern Polemical Anti-Ethnographies of Jews: An Unpublished Book on Jewish Mores by the Czech Catholic Priest Karel Jugl,” in Frankfurt’s “Jewish Notabilia” (“Jüdische Merckwürdigkeiten”): Ethnographic Views of Urban Jewry in Central Europe around 1700, special issue of Frankfurter Judaistische Beiträge 40 (2015), ed. Christoph Cluse and Rebekka Voss, 194. 35. Kral, “Auswirkungen des Familiantengesetzes,” 87. 36. Miller, Rabbis and Revolution, 38. 37. Ibid. 38. Gerson Wolf, Joseph Wertheimer: Ein Lebens- und Zeitbild—Beiträge zur Geschichte der Juden Oesterreich’s in neuester Zeit (Vienna: Herzfield & Bauer, 1868), 62; quoted in Miller, Rabbis and Revolution, 39. 39. Sándor Büchler, “Zsidó letelepedések magyarországon a móhácsi vész után,” Magyar Zsidó Szemle 10 (1893), 384. 40. Miller, Rabbis and Revolution, 56–57. My discussion of Hasidism is largely taken from these pages. 41. Jacob Emden, Torat ha-kana’ut (Lvov, 1870), 121. Originally published in Amsterdam in 1752. 42. Gershom Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi: The Mystical Messiah, 1626–1676 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973), 564. 43. Gershom Scholem, Mehkere Shabta’ut (‘Am ‘Oved: Tel Aviv, 1991), 622. 44. R. Jonathan Eibeschütz, And I Came This Day unto the Fountain, ed. and intro. Pawel Maciejko (Los Angeles: Cherub Press, 2014); Elisheva Carlebach, The Pursuit of Heresy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), 177–82. 45. Jacob Emden, Torat ha-kana’ut, 121. 46. Pawel Maciejko, The Mixed Multitude: Jacob Frank and the Frankist Movement, 1755–1816 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015).

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47. Ruth Kestenberg-Gladstein, Neuere Geschichte der Juden in den böhmischen Ländern (Tübingen: Mohr, 1969), 174–75. 48. Gerson Wolf, Judentaufen in Oesterreich (Vienna: Herzfeld & Bauer, 1863), 78–79; Maciejko, The Mixed Multitude, 191–98. 49. Václav Žáček, “Zwei Beiträge zur Geschichte des Frankismus in den böhmischen Ländern,” JGGJČR 9 (1938), 370. 50. Maoz Kahana, From the Noda BeYehuda to the Chatam Sofer (Jerusalem: Merkaz Zalman Shazar, 2015), 107–9. 51. Moshe Samet, “Yonatan Eybeschütz,” YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, https:// yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx /Eybeschutz _Yonatan (accessed October 30, 2020), 486–88. On the tensions between the two yeshivas, see also Pinhas Katzenellenbogen, Sefer Yesh Manhilin (Jerusalem: Mekhon Hatam Sofer, 1986), 182. 52. Isaac Hirsch Weiss, Zikhronotai mi-yalduti ‘ad mil’at li shemonim shanah (Warsaw: Schuldberg, 1895), 73; quoted in Miller, Rabbis and Revolution, 63. 53. Hillel J. Kieval, Languages of Community, 28. Two studies of Ezekiel Landau have recently been published: Sharon Flatto, The Kabbalistic Culture of Eighteenth- Century Prague (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2015); and Kahana, From the Noda BeYehuda to the Chatam Sofer. 54. Kahana, From the Noda BeYehuda to the Chatam Sofer, 17. 55. Flatto, The Kabbalistic Culture of Eighteenth- Century Prague. 56. Maoz Kahana, “The Allure of Forbidden Knowledge: The Temptation of Sabbatean Literature for Mainstream Rabbis in the Frankist Movement, 1756–1761,” Jewish Quarterly Review 102.4 (Fall 2012), 594. 57. Rachel Elior, “R. Nathan Adler and the Frankfurt Pietists,” in Jüdische Kultur in Frankfurt am Main von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart, ed. Karl E. Grözinger (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 1997), 152–57, 163–67. 58. Michael K. Silber, “Josephinian Reforms,” YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, https://yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx /Josephinian_Reforms (accessed October 20, 2020), 831–34. On Joseph II’s politics of toleration, see Derek Beales, Joseph II: Against the World, 1780–1790 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 168–213. 59. Hillel J. Kieval, “Czech Landscape, Habsburg Crown: The Jews of Bohemia and Moravia to 1918,” in Languages of Community: The Jewish Experience in the Czech Lands, 28. 60. Hillel J. Kieval, “Caution’s Progress: The Modernization of Jewish Life in Prague, 1780–1830,” in Toward Modernity: The European Jewish Model, ed. Jacob Katz (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1987), 71–105. 61. Miller, Rabbis and Revolution, 60–98. 62. Wilma Iggers, ed., The Jews of Bohemia and Moravia, 48–49. 63. Ivo Cerman, “Familiants Laws,” YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, [https:// yivoencyclopedia.org /article.aspx /Familiants _ Laws (accessed October 30, 2020), 493–94. 64. Wenzel Žáček, “Eine Studie zur Entwicklung der jüdischen Personennamen in neuer Zeit,” JGGJČR 8 (1936), 309–97. 65. Ibid., 318–19; Dorothea McEwan, “Jüdisches Leben im mährischen Ghetto. Eine Skizzierung der Stetl-Geschichte von Lomnitz bis 1848,” Mitteilungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung, 99.1–2 (1991), 109–10. 66. Žáček, “Eine Studie,” 311; Lenka Matušíková, “Namensänderungen in jüdischen Familien im Jahre 1787 am Beispiel der jüdischen Gemeinde Kanitz (Dolní Kounice),” Judaica Bohemiae 34 (1998), 107–25. 67. Lenka Matušíková, “Jména Židů v Čechách a na Moravě v proměnách času,” in K dějinám Židů v českých zemích (Prague: Národni archiv, 2015), 279. 68. Michael K. Silber, “From Tolerated Aliens to Citizen-Soldiers: Jewish Military Ser vice in the Era of Joseph II,” in Constructing Nationalities in East Central Europe, ed. Pieter M. Judson and Marsha L. Rozenblit (New York: Berghahn Books, 2004), 19–36; Wenzel Žáček, “Zu den Anfängen der Militärpflichtigkeit der Juden in Böhmen,” JGGJČR 7 (1935), 265–303.

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69. Silber, “From Tolerated Aliens,” 24–25; Kestenberg-Gladstein, Neuere Geschichte der Juden, 70. 70. Abraham Trebitsch, Korot ha-‘Itim (Brünn, 1801), paragraph 59; cited in Silber, “From Tolerated Aliens,” 29. 71. Kestenberg-Gladstein, Neuere Geschichte der Juden, 70–72; “Toledot ha-zman,” Ha-Me’asef (Iyyar 5549 [May 1789]), 252–53. 72. Kieval, “Caution’s Progress,” 71–105. 73. Kestenberg-Gladstein, Neuere Geschichte der Juden, 117–32, 257; Miller, Rabbis and Revolution, 88–91; Michael K. Silber, “The Historical Experience of German Jewry and Its Impact on the Haskalah and Reform in Hungary,” in Toward Modernity, ed. Jacob Katz, 115. 74. Kestenberg-Gladstein, Neuere Geschichte der Juden, 117–91. 75. Flatto, The Kabbalistic Culture of Eighteenth- Century Prague, 56. 76. Kestenberg-Gladstein, Neuere Geschichte der Juden, 162–63. 77. Silber, “The Historical Experience of German Jewry,” 107–57. 78. Miller, Rabbis and Revolution, 86.

Chapter 3 1. Wolfgang Häusler, “Hermann Jellinek (1823–1848): Ein Demokrat in der Wiener Revolution,” Jahrbuch des Instituts für deutsche Geschichte 5 (1976), 125–75, here 170. 2. On Hermann Jellinek’s journalistic activity during the 1848 Revolution and his subsequent execution, see Klaus Kempter, Die Jellineks 1820–1955: Eine familienbiographische Studie zum deutschjüdischen Bildungsbürgertum (Düsseldorf: Droste, 1998), 65–104; and Häusler, “Hermann Jellinek.” 3. The testament and letters can be found at the National Library of Israel, ARC. 4* 1588 01 58: Letters by Hermann and Adolf Jellinek. 4. The report on Hermann Jellinek’s final minutes comes from the major who was commanding the firing squad. See Häusler, “Hermann Jellinek,” 172; based on Tim Klein, ed., 1848: Der Vorkampf deutscher Einheit und Freiheit. Erinnerungen, Urkunden, Berichte, Briefe (Munich, 1914), 403. 5. Michael L. Miller, “Uherský Brod,” YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, 2008 http:// www.yivoencyclopedia.org /article.aspx /Uhersky_ Brod; and idem, “Going Native:  Moritz Jellinek and the Modernization of the Hungarian Economy,” in: The Economy in Jewish History; New Perspectives on the Interrelationship between Ethnicity and Economic Life, ed. Gideon Reuveni and Sarah Wobick-Segev (New York: Berghahn Books, 2011), 157–73. 6. Jellinek published a study of the life and work of Uriel da Costa (Uriel Acosta’s Leben und Lehre [Zerbst: Druck und Verlag der Kummer’schen Buchhandlung, 1847]) and had begun to write one on Spinoza as well. The intended title for this work was “Spinoza mit Beziehung auf das Judenthum,” the draft of which was destroyed by Jellinek’s father after Hermann was arrested. Apparently, Isak Löw feared that it might be used as incriminating evidence by the state. See Kempter, Die Jellineks, 37–38, and 50–51. 7. Miller, “Uherský Brod.” 8. On the establishment of Josephinian schools in the Bohemian Lands, see Ruth KestenbergGladstein, Neuere Geschichte der Juden in den böhmischen Ländern. Erster Teil: Das Zeitalter der Aufklärung 1780–1830 (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1969), 34–65; Louise Hecht, “Die Prager deutschjüdische Schulanstalt 1782–1848,” in Jüdische Erziehung und aufklärerische Schulreform: Analysen zum späten 18. und frühen 19. Jahrhundert, ed. Britta L. Behm, Uta Lohmann, and Ingrid Lohmann (Münster: Waxmann, 2002), 213–52; Hillel J. Kieval, Languages of Community: The Jewish Experience in the Czech Lands (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 37–64; and Michael K. Silber, “Josephinian Reforms,” YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, 2008 http://www .yivoencyclopedia.org /article.aspx /Josephinian _ Reforms. 9. Johann Wanniczek, Geschichte der Prager Haupt-, Trivial- und Mädchen-Schule der Israeliten, deren Verfassung und merkwürdigen Vorfälle von ihrer Gründung bis auf gegenwärtign Zeiten (Prague:

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Notes to Pages 92–96

M. I. Landau, 1832), 38–40. Wanniczek also blames the “personal faults of one or another member of the teaching staff” (40). Attendance at the school sank. And in 1799 instruction simply ceased for a period of time. 10. Wanniczek describes private teachers as gradu ates of rabbinical academies (yeshivot) or gymnasia—possibly both—who had passed some kind of pedagogical examination; bocherim, in contrast, were current students at public or private yeshivot (Wanniczek, Geschichte, 38). For the Moravian context, see Michael Laurence Miller, Rabbis and Revolution: The Jews of Moravia in the Age of Emancipation (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011), 124–28. 11. Hecht, “Die Prager deutsch-jüdische Schulanstalt,” 227–32; Louise Hecht, Ein jüdischer Aufklärer in Böhmen: Der Pädagoge und Reformer Peter Beer (1758–1838) (Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 2008), 79–83; Hillel J. Kieval, “The Unforeseen Consequences of Cultural Resistance: Haskalah and State-Mandated Reform in the Bohemian Lands,” Jewish Culture and History 13.2–3 (2012), 108–23. 12. “Die Prager-Josefstädter Haupt- und Unter-Realschule: Eine historische Skizze,” in Jahrbuch für israelitische Eltern, Lehrer und Schulfreunde 5617 (1856–1857), ed. Adolph Hlawatsch (Vienna: Adalbert della Torre, 1856), 102–3; Herz Klaber, Beschreibung der am 30. Mai 1832 gehaltenen fünfzigjährigen Jubelfeyer der israel. deutschen Hauptschule in Prag (Prague: M. I. Landau, 1833), 64. 13. Hecht, Ein jüdischer Aufklärer in Böhmen, 83–100. According to the survey mentioned in n. 12 (“Die Prager-Josefstädter Haupt- und Unter-Realschule”), “religiöse Moral” was one of the original subjects in the Prague Hauptschule, alongside reading, writing, arithmetic, and language. Geography, natu ral history, and the textbook Bne Zion were added later. 14. “Die Prager-Josefstädter Haupt- und Unter-Realschule,” 102–4. It was under Raaz’s directorship, in 1819, that the Mädchenschule was formally separated from the Hauptschule, and the Trivialschule formally established. 15. “Die Prager-Josefstädter Haupt- und Unter-Realschule,” 104. On Wessely (1801–70), see Hillel J. Kieval and Daniel Polakovič, “Wessely, Wolfgang,” YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, 2008 http://www.yivoencyclopedia .org /article.aspx / Wessely_Wolfgang; and Constantin von Wurzbach, Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Österreich, vol. 50 (1884; rpt., New York, [1966]), 182–84. 16. Wanniczek, Geschichte, 42–43. 17. Ibid. The tables are reprinted in Hecht, “Die Prager deutsch-jüdische Schulanstalt,” 249. For the period 1832 to 1856, “Die Prager-Josefstädter Haupt- und Unter-Realschule,” 107. 18. “Mittheilungen aus und über Schulen,” in Jahrbuch für israelitische Eltern, Lehrer und Schulfreunde 5617 (1856–57), 196. An editor’s note points out that Bohemian statistics for 1786 listed 28 Trivialschulen for Bohemia, not including the Hauptschule; thus there was a decline in the number of Jewish elementary schools, most likely a function of migration and loss of population in the countryside. 19. “Mittheilungen aus und über Schulen,” 196–97. 20. Ibid., 198–99. 21. Wanniczek, Geschichte, 36. 22. Ibid., 36–37. 23. On the rural context of Czech-Jewish cultural integration, see Hillel J. Kieval, The Making of Czech Jewry: National Conflict and Jewish Society in Bohemia, 1870–1918 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 10–35. 24. “Die Prager-Josefstädter Haupt- und Unter-Realschule,” 106. 25. Wanniczek, Geschichte, 39; see also Věra Leininger, Auszug aus dem Ghetto: Rechtstellung und Emanzipationsbemühungen der Juden in Prag in der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts (Singapore: Kuda Api Press, 2006), 86–88. I infer from this discussion that Wanniczek distinguished between bocherim as a social and cultural type and formal yeshiva students; similarly, between bocherim and those private tutors who had been certified (examined) by the state. He explained that he was not opposed to regular private tutors, who offer instruction that supplements or reinforces what is provided by the public schools (39–40). What he opposed were private tutors who competed with

Notes to Pages 97–103

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the public schools, offered parents an alternative curriculum for their children, and reinforced the conservative resistance of traditional families to the Josephinian school. 26. For a detailed study of the struggle over the formation of the modern rabbi in central Europe, see Carsten Wilke, “Den Talmud und den Kant”: Rabbinerausbildung an der Schwelle zur Moderne (Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 2003). 27. Ibid., 267–68. 28. Ibid., 268. See also František Roubík, “Drei Beiträge zur Entwicklung der Judenemanzipation in Böhmen,” Jahrbuch der Gesellschaft für die Geschichte der Juden in der Čechoslovakischen Republik (hereinafter JGGJČR) 5 (1933): 313–48; and idem, “Zur Geschichte der Juden in Böhmen in der ersten Hälfte des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts,” JGGJČR 6 (1934): 285–322. The very terms “jüdische Theologie” and “theologische Studien” could carry different meanings and connotations depending on user and context. At times they were employed to indicate traditional rabbinic subjects and at other times to characterize an alternative to Talmudic study focusing instead on the Hebrew Bible, Semitics, and homiletics. 29. Roubík, “Drei Beiträge,” and “Zur Geschichte.” 30. Wilke, “Den Talmud,” 325–26. 31. Ibid., 327. 32. Ibid., 327–28. 33. Ibid., 329. 34. Ibid., 459. 35. Ibid., 509–10, here 510 (Letter of the Gemeindevorstand to the Prague Magistrate’s Office, 24 July 1839). 36. Ibid., 510. 37. Ibid., 510–11. 38. For these examples, see ibid., 534, and citations therein. 39. Isaac Hirsch Weiss, Zikhronotai (Warsaw: Shuldberg, 1895), 15. 40. Wilke, “Den Talmud,” 534–35; Weiss, Zikhronotai, 18–19; 22–27. 41. On cultural conditions in Prossnitz, see Miller, Rabbis and Revolution, 88–98. 42. Wilke, “Den Talmud,” 536–37; Kempter, Die Jellineks, 29–31; and, for a more extensive survey, Miller, Rabbis and Revolution, 99–137. 43. On the Association for the Improvement of Jewish Worship, see František Roubík, “Von den Anfängen des Vereines für Verbesserung des israelitischen Kultus in Böhmen,” JGGJČR 9 (1938): 411–47; Hecht, Ein jüdischer Aufklärer in Böhmen, 337–57; and Michael  A. Meyer, Response to Modernity: A History of the Reform Movement in Judaism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 152–55. 44. Roubík, “Von den Anfängen,” 420–25; Hecht, Ein jüdischer Aufklärer, 349–55. 45. Wanniczek, Geschichte, 22–24; 40–44; “Mittheilungen aus und über Schulen,” 196–201. 46. The philanthropist and salonnière Elise Herz (1788–1868), for example, received both a solid religious and arts education, which included modern languages (including Czech, taught to her by Václav Hanka, of forged-manuscript fame), music, painting, botany, and other natural sciences. See Constantin von Wurzbach, Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich, 8 (1862), 405–6. 47. The full title of the work is Stunden der Andacht: Ein Gebet- und Erbauungsbuch für Israels Frauen und Jungfrauen, zur öffentlichen und häuslichen Andacht, so wie für alle Verhältnisse des weiblichen Lebens (Prague: Wolf Pascheles, 1854). Quotations are from the Prague 1858 edition. 48. Ibid., xi. 49. Ibid., xii. 50. “Ein Wort an die edlen Mütter und Frauen in Israel,” in ibid., 143–52; here, 143. 51. Ibid., 144. Characteristically, Neuda writes that the power of the mother to mold the tastes, habits, curiosity, and piety of her children—especially during their younger years—is denied to the father, whose work outside the house effectively cuts him off from the education of children (145). 52. Ibid., 146.

330

Notes to Pages 103–114

53. Ibid., 146–47. 54. Ibid., 147–48. 55. Ibid., 148. 56. Kieval, Languages of Community, 65–94; Kempter, Die Jellineks. 57. Wilma Iggers describes the high schools attached to the Piarist teaching order, improbably, as places where “mostly Czech priests taught predominantly Jewish classes in German.” The Jews of Bohemia and Moravia: A Historical Reader, ed. Wilma Abeles Iggers (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1992), 110. 58. For Kompert, see Constantin von Wurzbach, Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich, vol. 12 (Vienna, 1864), 404–10; Salomon Wininger, Große jüdische National-Biographie, vol. 3 (Cernăuţi, 1928), 506 f.; and Stefan Hock, ed., Leopold Komperts ausgewählte Werke, vol. 1: Komperts Leben und Schaffen (Leipzig, 1906). For Heller, see Constantin von Wurzbach, Biographisches Lexikon, vol. 8 (Vienna, 1862), 272–75. For Jellinek, Moses Rosenmann, Dr. Adolf Jellinek: Sein Leben und Schaffen (Vienna: J. Schlesinger, 1931), 17; Kempter, Die Jellineks, 22, 26. 59. Letter to Alfred Meissner, quoted in Otto Wittner, Moritz Hartmanns Jugend (Vienna: Selfpublished, 1903), 10. 60. Wittner, Moritz Hartmanns Jugend, 11; Leopold Kompert, Aus dem Ghetto: Geschichten, 3d ed. (Berlin, 1882), 125–28. 61. Oskar Donath, “Siegfried Kapper,” JGGJČR 6 (1934), 323–95, here 325–26; Siegfried Kapper, “Autobiographie I,” JGGJČR 6 (1934), 396–97; and Oskar Donath, “Siegfried Kappers Leben und Wirken,” Archiv für slavische Philologie 30 (1908/09), 400–447, here 404–5. 62. Donath, “Siegfried Kapper,” 327–28; Donath, “Siegfried Kappers Leben und Wirken,” 405– 8. On the Dvůr Králové and Zelená Hora manuscripts, see Andrew Lass, “Romantic Documents and Political Monuments: The Meaning-Fulfillment of History in 19th- Century Czech Nationalism,” American Ethnologist 15.3 (1988), 456–71. 63. Wittner, Moritz Hartmanns Jugend, 11. 64. Ibid., 20–21. 65. Kapper, “Autobiographie I,” 396. 66. On Adolf Jellinek’s Prague years, see Rosenmann, Dr. Adolf Jellinek, 21–27; for the two brothers, see Kempter, Die Jellineks, 31–35. 67. Kempter, Die Jellineks, 32; Rosenmann, Dr. Adolf Jellinek, 22–27. 68. Kempter, Die Jellineks, 32–40. 69. Kieval, Languages of Community, 71–74. 70. Ibid., 73–74; Wittner, Moritz Hartmanns Jugend, 23–24. 71. Wurzbach, Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Österreich, 8: 273. 72. Donath, “Siegfried Kapper,” 331–32, 352–63. 73. Wurzbach, Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Österreich, 12: 406–7. 74. On the Jewish commercial and industrial elites in Prague, see Martina Niedhammer, Nur eine “Geld-Emancipation”? Loyalitäten und Lebenswelten des Prager jüdischen Groβbürgertums 1800– 1867 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013) and Leininger, Auszug aus dem Ghetto. 75. On the expansion of Jewish settlement in Prague in the first half of the nineteenth century—both legal and illegal—see Leininger, Auszug aus dem Ghetto, 175–207. 76. Eight months later, a similar complaint was made, this time to the proper municipal authorities, under the name of one “Salomon Pick.” See Leininger, Auszug aus dem Ghetto, 186–88. 77. These petitions are described and analyzed in ibid., 188–98. 78. Ibid., 192–93. 79. This event is described in ibid., 199, where the nine individuals are named and their addresses are given. 80. Ibid., 200–203. The official figures for 1834 counted 208 families in the Christian town (of whom only 17 were identified as wholesale merchants or industrialists) and 199 or 200 in the expanded Jewish district. 81. Niedhammer, Nur eine “Geld-Emancipation”? 82–98, 281–85.

Notes to Pages 115–126

331

82. See the anonymous “Bericht” of June 20, 1844, in Der Orient 27 (July 2, 1844), 214. 83. See the discussion in Miller, Rabbis and Revolution, 160–61; also “Juden,” in Oesterreichisches Staatswörterbuch 2 (Vienna: Alfred Hölder, 1896), 168–96, here 182–84. 84. Miller, Rabbis and Revolution, 202–3. 85. “Juden,” in Oesterreichisches Staatswörterbuch 2, 182–84, 186, 191–92. 86. David Bernhard Frankl was born in the Bohemian village of Chrást (Chrast) near Chrudim, where he attended a Czech primary school and learned German, Hebrew, piano, and song at home. See W.[William Wightman], David Bernhard Frankl: Biographische Skizze ([Vienna], [1859]); and Louise Hecht, “Eine polyphone Biographie—Einleitung,” in Ludwig August Frankl (1810–1894): Eine jüdische Biographie zwischen Okzident und Orient (Cologne: Böhlau, 2016), 19–21. 87. Hillel J. Kieval, “Bohemia and Moravia,” YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, 2008 http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx /Bohemia _ and _ Moravia; “Juden,” in Oesterreichisches Staatswörterbuch, 2: 181–92. 88. Kieval, Languages of Community, 82–83. See also the reports of the Prague correspondents to Der Orient in the July 9, 23, and 30, 1844 issues. These Berichte are identified by initials only, but there are strong indications that at least one of the writers was David Kuh (1818–79). On the role of Jews in the mechanization of the textile industry, see Christoph Stölzl, “Zur Geschichte der böhmischen Juden in der Epoche des modernen Nationalismus,” pt. 1, Bohemia: Jahrbuch des Collegium Carolinum 14 (1973), 188–90. On Bohemian Jewish reactions to the 1844 riots, see Kieval, Languages of Community, 83–86; and Stölzl, “Zur Geschichte,” pt. 1, 205–8. 89. Miller, Rabbis and Revolution, 232; František Roubík, Český rok 1848 (Prague: Ladislav Kuncíř, 1948), 221–23. 90. Miller, Rabbis and Revolution, 233–40, 397 n. 52. 91. “Juden,” in Oesterreichisches Staatswörterbuch 2, 182; Leininger, Auszug aus dem Ghetto, 414–17. 92. Leininger, Auszug aus dem Ghetto, 417–19. 93. On the Jewish political communities in Moravia, see, inter alia, Miller, Rabbis and Revolution, 331–32.

Chapter 4 1. Šimon Wels, U Bernátů (Prague: Torst, 1993). 2. Michael Rund, Po stopách Rudolfa Welse: Život a dílo žáka a spolupracovníka Adolfa Loose (Sokolov: Fornica, 2006). 3. “Staatsgrundgesetz vom 21. Dezember 1867, über die allgemeinen Rechte der Staatsbürger für die im Reichsrathe vertretenen Königreiche und Länder,” 142 Reichsgesetzblatt 1848–1918 (1867), Art. 2, http://alex.onb.ac.at/cgi-content/alex?apm​= ​0&aid​=​rgb&datum​=​18670004&seite​= ​0 0000394 (accessed March 23, 2018). 4. Jan Heřman, “Structure and Development of the Jewish Population of Bohemia and Moravia, 1754–1953,” Documentation Center for Jewish Demography and Statistics, Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (1971). 5. Josef Schön, “Geschichte der Juden in Tachau und Umgebung,” in Die Juden und Judengemeinden Böhmens in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart, ed. Hugo Gold (Brno: Jüdischer Buch- und Kunstverlag, 1934), 631–45. 6. “Surovost proti židu,” Národní listy, December 2, 1861, 2. 7. NA, f. PM 1860–1870, call number 8/17/37, box 889, reports by district captain (Bezirksvorsteher), December 11, 1861, February 25, 1866. 8. Josef Hofmann, “Geschichte der Juden in Kaaden,” in Die Juden und Judengemeinden Böhmens, ed. Gold, 236–37. 9. David Lawson, Libuše Salomonovičová, and Hana Šústková, Ostrava and Its Jews: “Now No- One Sings You Lullabies” (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 2018).

332

Notes to Pages 126–133

10. Mirjam Zadoff, Next Year in Marienbad: The Lost Worlds of Jewish Spa Culture (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012). 11. Rund, Po stopách, 31–51. 12. Norman Cohn, Warrant for Genocide: The Myth of the Jewish World Conspiracy and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (London: Serif, 2005), 38–45. 13. Eduard Rüffer, Spiknutí židů v Praze, 3 pts. in 2 vols. (Prague: Al. Hynek, 1873). 14. Quoted in Cathleen M. Giustino, Tearing Down Prague’s Jewish Town: Ghetto Clearance and the Legacy of Middle- Class Ethnic Politics around 1900, East European Monographs, no. 618 (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs 2003), 189. 15. Giustino, Tearing Down Prague’s Jewish Town; Giustino, “Municipal Activism in LateNineteenth-Century Prague: The House Numbered 207-V and Ghetto Clearance,” Austrian History Yearbook 34 (2003), 247–78. 16. Martin Šmok, Stopy židovské přítomnosti v Praze 2 / Traces of Jewish Presence in Prague 2 (Prague: Městská část Praha 2, 2015). 17. “Židé na Kr. Vinohradech . . . ,” Vyšehrad, September 12, 1896, 298. 18. For an overview of Moravian Jewish history in the nineteenth century, see Michael L. Miller, Rabbis and Revolution: The Jews of Moravia in the Age of Emancipation (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011). 19. Emil Goldmann, “Die politischen Judengemeinden in Mähren,” Zeitschrift für Volkswirtschaft, Sozialpolitik und Verwaltung 7 (1898), 557–95. 20. Peter Urbanitsch, “Die politischen Judengemeinden in Mähren nach 1848,” in Moravští židé v rakousko-uherské monarchii (1780–1918) / Mährische Juden in der österreichisch-ungarischen Monarchie (1780–1918) (Brno: Státní okresní archiv Břeclav, 2003), 39–53. 21. Gesetz vom 21. März 1890 betreffend die Regelung der äußeren Rechtsverhältnisse der israelitischen Religionsgesellschaft, Reichsgesetzblatt, April 15, 1890, 109–13, http://alex.onb.ac.at/cgi -content/alex?aid​=​rgb&datum​=​1890&page​=​145 (accessed March 23, 2018). 22. Miller, Rabbis and Revolution, 327–31. 23. See the articles in the Bohemian yearbook Jüdische Chronik (1895–1900), the Moravian weekly Jüdische Volksstimme (1900–1914), and chap. 5 in this volume. 24. Arno Pařík, Symbols of Emancipation: Nineteenth- Century Synagogues in the Czech Lands (Prague: Jewish Museum in Prague, 2013). 25. Michael A. Meyer, Response to Modernity: A History of the Reform Movement in Judaism (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1995), 183. 26. Pařík, Symbols of Emancipation, 80–81. The synagogue was badly damaged in an American air raid just before the end of World War II and was torn down in 1951. 27. Archiv Židovského muzea v Praze (AŽMP), fond Židovská náboženská obec Loštice, sign. 11253, Plan zur Adaptirung [sic] der Synagoge in Loschitz, datiert M[ährisch-] Neustadt, January 23, 1877. 28. Meyer, Response to Modernity, 41. 29. Hillel J. Kieval, The Making of Czech Jewry: National Conflict and Jewish Society in Bohemia, 1870–1918 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 41–42. 30. Ibid., 44. 31. Ibid., 52–53. 32. AŽMP, fond Židovská náboženská obec Kolín, škola-spisy, zrušení německé národní školy (1898), sign. 41077, Protokoll des Gemeindevorstands der Jüdischen Gemeinde Kolin, September 8, 1898. 33. Kieval, Making of Czech Jewry, 54–55. 34. The following passage is based on Martina Niedhammer, “Kooperation statt Migration? Die Einrichtung der ‘Zentralstelle für jüdische Wanderarmen-Fürsorge’ in Wien 1911–1914,” in Kooperatives Imperium: Politische Zusammenarbeit in der späten Habsburgermonarchie, ed. Jana Osterkamp (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2018), 249–64.

Notes to Pages 134–138

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35. Gary B. Cohen, “Jews in German Society: Prague, 1860–1914,” Central European History 10.1 (1977), 28–54. 36. Paula E. Hyman, “Gender and the Shaping of Modern Jewish Identities,” Jewish Social Studies, n.s. 8.2/3 (2002), 153–61, here 155. 37. Fanny Neuda, Jugend-Erzählungen aus dem jüdischen Familienleben (Vienna: Self-published, 1876). The second, extended edition has a slightly modified title: Jugend-Erzählungen aus dem israelitischen Familienleben (Prague: Brandeis, 1890). 38. Neuda, “Der Gast (Ostern),” in Jugend-Erzählungen aus dem jüdischen Familienleben, 39–67. 39. Neuda, “Die Zigeunerin (Tempelweihfest),” in ibid., 1–38. The story is set in the Pannonian Steppe (Puszta) of Hungary, which is all the more striking because Neuda rarely mentions place names. 40. Ibid., 6. 41. Several examples of mourning albums printed in the Habsburg monarchy in about 1900 are preserved in the AŽMP, fond Varia. 42. Marie Kauders, Erstes israelitisches Kochbuch für böhmische Küche. Enthaltend: 586 auf mehr als vierzigjährige Erfahrung gegründete Original-Küchenrecepte (Prague: Jacob Brandeis, 1886). 43. Ruth Abusch-Magder, “Kulinarische Bildung: Jüdische Kochbücher als Medien der Verbürgerlichung,” in Deutsch-jüdische Geschichte als Geschlechtergeschichte: Studien zum 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Kirsten Heinsohn and Stefanie Schüler-Springorum (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2006), 159–76. 44. Marion A. Kaplan, The Making of the Jewish Middle Class: Women, Family, and Identity in Imperial Germany (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 74. 45. Kauders, Erstes israelitisches Kochbuch, 33. 46. Ibid., 167–68. 47. Jana Vobecká, Demographic Avant- Garde: Jews in Bohemia between the Enlightenment and the Shoah (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2013), 71–73. 48. AŽMP, fond Židovská náboženská obec Praha, sign. 128469, Matriken, Civilehe. Register standesamtlicher Trauungen zwischen Juden und Nichtjuden, Prag, 1871–1917, 18/3b. 49. Leopold Kompert, Zwischen Ruinen: Roman. 2 vols. (Berlin: Louis Gerschel, 1875). 50. AŽMP, fond Židovská náboženská obec Praha, přestupy na židovskou víru [1860–1917], sign. 172841. 51. AŽMP, fond Varia, Blaschke, Marie, přestup na židovskou víru, 1872, sign. 44382, Zeugniss vom 11.3.1872, über den Übertritt Marie Blaschkes. 52. AŽMP, fond Židovská náboženská obec Ostrava, Výpisy z matrik farního úřadu Moravské Ostravy, sign. 56206, Übersicht über Aus- und Eintritte in das Judentum, 4. 53. Daniel Polakovič, “Pascheles, Wolf,” YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, http:// www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx /Pascheles _Wolf (accessed March 25, 2018). Pascheles’s almanac later changed its name to Pascheles’ illustrierter israelitischer Volkskalender. 54. Kateřina Čapková, “Českožidovské Listy,” YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org /article.aspx /Ceskozidovske _ Listy (accessed March 25, 2018). 55. Kateřina Čapková, Czechs, Germans, Jews? National Identity and the Jews of Bohemia (New York: Berghahn Books, 2012), 179–80. 56. Heinrich Grünau, “An Jung Juda!” Jung Juda: Zeitschrift für unsere Jugend, September 27, 1901, [1]. 57. Miroslava Kyselá, “Die jüdische Presse für die Jugend in der Tschechoslowakei der Zwischenkriegszeit,” in Deutsch-jüdische Presse und jüdische Geschichte, vol. 2: Religion und Politik in der europäisch-jüdischen Presse vor der Shoah—Antisemitismus, Faschismus und Nationalsozialismus, 1880–1943—Neuorientierungen nach der Shoah, ed. Eleonore Lappin and Michael Nagel (Bremen: Edition lumière, 2008), 81–88, here 82. 58. Čapková, Czechs, Germans, Jews? 179.

334

Notes to Pages 138–142

59. Kyselá, “Die jüdische Presse,” 81. 60. “Correspondenz der Redaction,” Jung Juda, September 27, 1901, 16. 61. Ibid. 62. On Kompert, see Thomas Winkelbauer, “Leopold Kompert und die böhmischen Landjuden,” in Conditio Judaica, vol. 2: Judentum, Antisemitismus und deutschsprachige Literatur vom 18. Jahrhundert bis zum Ersten Weltkrieg, ed. Hans Otto Horch and Horst Denkler (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1989), 190–217; Jonathan  M. Hess, “Leopold Kompert and the Pleasures of Nostalgia: Ghetto Fiction and the Creation of a Usable Past,” in Middlebrow Literature and the Making of German-Jewish Identity, Stanford Studies in Jewish History and Culture (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010), 72–110. 63. On Rakous, see Oskar Donath, Židé a židovství v české literatuře 19. a 20. století, vol. 2 (Brno: Vanity press, 1930), 219–22; Štěpán Balík, “Prozaické a dramatické figurky Vojtěcha Rakouse,” in Cizí i blízcí. Židé, literatura, kultura v českých zemích ve 20. století, ed. Jiří Holý (Prague: Akropolis, 2016), 185–96. 64. Most of the stories, including the series about Modche and Rézi, are published in Vojtěch Rakous, Vojkovičtí a přespolní, 3 vols., 7th exp. ed. (Prague: Obelisk, 1926), and Vojtěch Rakous, Die Geschichten von Modche und Resi und anderen lieben Leuten, 2 vols. (Prague: Tribuna, 1922). 65. Vojtěch Rakous, “Die zwei Letzten,” trans. Anna Auředníčková, Menorah 6.8 (1928), 455– 62; Czech original, “Dva poslední,” Kalendář česko-židovský 51 (1931–32), 57–63. 66. Richard I. Cohen, “Nostalgia and ‘Return to the Ghetto’: A Cultural Phenomenon in Western and Central Europe,” in Assimilation and Community in European Jewry, 1815–1900: The Jews in Nineteenth- Century Europe, ed. Jonathan Frankel and Steven  J. Zipperstein (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 130–55; Ines Koeltzsch, “Die Anwesenheit des Abwesenden: Nostalgie und das kulturelle Gedächtnis böhmisch-mährischer Landjuden vor und nach der Shoah,” S:I.M.O.N. 3.2 (2016), 37–57, http://simon.vwi.ac .at /index .php/40 -issues/2016 -2/articles /146 - die -anwesenheit-des -abwesenden-nostalgie -und-das -kulturelle -geda-chtnis -bo -hmischma -hrischer-landjuden-vor-und-nach-der-shoah (accessed March 25, 2018). 67. For example, Vojtěch Rakous, “Když přišla válka—Zpívající vlak,” Korespondence Svazu českých pokrokových židů 2 (May 3, 1918), 7; Max Lederer, Za zrezavělými dráty: Příběhy pravdivé a skoro pravdivé (Prague: Kapper, 1924). 68. On the emergence and persistence of the Ostjuden stereotype in the Central European context, see Anne-Christin Saß, “Ostjuden,” in Enzyklopädie jüdischer Geschichte und Kultur, vol. 4, ed. Dan Diner (Stuttgart: Metzler, 2013), 459–64. 69. Quoted in Kieval, Making of Czech Jewry, 176. See also Viktor Teytz, Několik poznámek k otázce českožidovské (Prague: Spolek českých akademiků židů, 1913), 16. 70. Petra Ernst, “Das Verschwinden der Ghettogeschichte und die Erfindung des Ostjuden im Zeichen des Ersten Weltkriegs,” in Jüdische Publizistik und Literatur im Zeichen des Ersten Weltkriegs, ed. Petra Ernst and Eleonore Lappin (Innsbruck: Studien Verlag, 2016), 307–27. 71. Quoted in Kieval, Languages of Community, 221. See also František Langer, “Můj bratr Jiří,” in Byli a bylo. Vzpomínky (Prague: Akropolis, 2003), 179. 72. Scott Spector, Prague Territories: National Conflict and Cultural Innovation in Franz Kafka’s Fin de Siècle (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 168–72. 73. Jiří Langer, Devět bran: Chasidů tajemství (Prague: ELK Praha, 1937). 74. “Program Národních Listů,” Národní listy, January 1, 1861, 1–2. 75. See Jeremy King, Budweisers into Czechs and Germans: A Local History of Bohemian Politics, 1848–1948 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002); Pieter M. Judson, Guardians of the Nation: Activists on the Language Frontiers of Imperial Austria (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006); Tara Zahra, Kidnapped Souls: National Indifference and the Battle for Children in the Bohemian Lands, 1900–1948 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008). 76. Kieval, Making of Czech Jewry, 55–58. 77. Tara Zahra, “Imagined Noncommunities: National Indifference as a Category of Analysis,” Slavic Review 69.1 (2010), 93–119.

Notes to Pages 142–150

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78. M. Teller, Die Juden in Böhmen und ihre Stellung in der Gegenwart (Prague: Silber und Schenk, 1863). 79. Die Juden und die Nationalen. Ein Gegenstück zur Broschüre: “Die Juden in Böhmen”. Von einem Juden (Prague: Anton Renn, 1863); Antonín F. Tokstein, Židé v Čechách: Na základě nejspolehlivějších pramenů (Prague: Mikuláš & Knapp, 1867); see also Hillel J. Kieval, “On Myth, History, and National Belonging in the Nineteenth Century,” in Languages of Community: The Jewish Experience in the Czech Lands (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 114–34. 80. Pieter M. Judson, Exclusive Revolutionaries: Liberal Politics, Social Experience, and National Identity in the Austrian Empire, 1848–1914 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996), 127–28. 81. Michal Frankl and Jindřich Toman, eds., “Jan Neruda and Jews: Texts and Contexts” [special issue], Judaica Bohemiae 46.2 (2011). 82. For the history of Czech antisemitism at the end of the nineteenth century, see Michal Frankl, “Prag ist nunmehr antisemitisch”: Tschechischer Antisemitismus am Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts, Studien zum Antisemitismus in Europa, vol. 1 (Berlin: Metropol, 2011). 83. Cyril Horáček, Naše hospodářské nedostatky (Chrudim: Josef Pelcl, 1894). 84. Klaus Holz, Nationaler Antisemitismus: Wissenssoziologie einer Weltanschauung (Hamburg: Hamburger Ed., 2001); Klaus Holz, “Die antisemitische Konstruktion des ‘Dritten’ und die nationale Ordnung der Welt,” in Das “bewegliche” Vorurteil. Aspekte des internationalen Antisemitismus, ed. Christina von Braun and Eva-Maria Ziege (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2004), 43–61. 85. “Národní jednota českožidovská . . . ,” Vyšehrad, July 13, 1895, 222. 86. “Strana svobodomyslná v boji,” Národní listy, February 23, 1897, 2–3. 87. Michal Frankl, “From Boycott to Riot: Moravian Anti-Jewish Violence of 1899 and Its Background,” in Sites of European Antisemitism in the Age of Mass Politics, 1880–1918, ed. Robert Nemes and Daniel Unowsky (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2014), 94–114. 88. On ritual murder accusations and the language of medicine and science, see Hillel J. Kieval, “The Rules of the Game: Forensic Medicine and the Language of Science in the Structuring of Modern Ritual Murder Trials,” Jewish History 26.3–4 (2013), 287–307. 89. Jiří Kovtun, Tajuplná vražda: Případ Leopolda Hilsnera (Prague: Sefer, 1994); Bohumil Černý, Vražda v Polné (Prague: Vydavatelství časopisů MNO, 1968). 90. Gary B. Cohen, “Jews in German Society: Prague, 1860–1914,” Central European History 10.1 (1977), 44–45. 91. Arno Pařík, “Podnikatel a mecenáš Bohumil Bondy,” in Opomíjení a neoblíbení v české kultuře 19. století. Plzeň, ed. Taťána Petrasová and Helena Lorenzová (Prague: KLP, 2007), 293–304. 92. Pieter M. Judson, The Habsburg Empire: A New History (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2016). 93. Kieval, Making of Czech Jewry, 23–35. 94. Judson, Guardians of the Nation. 95. Kieval, Making of Czech Jewry, 58–59. 96. “Městský radní pražský p. Jech před soudem pro antisemitskou aféru,” Národní politika, March 25, 1897, 6. 97. Pařík, “Podnikatel a mecenáš Bohumil Bondy,” 302. 98. Hillel J. Kieval, “Nationalism and Antisemitism: The Czech-Jewish Response,” in Living with Antisemitism: Modern Jewish Responses, ed. Jehuda Reinharz (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1987), 210–33. 99. Viktor Vohryzek, “Nejsme parasity,” Rozvoj, January 14, 1904, 1–2. 100. Hillel J. Kieval, “Masaryk and Czech Jewry: The Ambiguities of Friendship,” in Languages of Community, 198–216. 101. Kieval, Making of Czech Jewry, 98. 102. “Selbstwehr!” Selbstwehr, March 1, 1907, 1. 103. Michael L. Miller, “Reluctant Kingmakers: Moravian Jewish Politics in Late Imperial Austria,” CEU Jewish Studies Yearbook 3 (2002–3), 111–23.

336

Notes to Pages 151–162

104. Kieval, Making of Czech Jewry, 121–22. 105. Vít Strobach, Židé: národ, rasa, třída: Sociální hnutí a “židovská otázka” v českých zemích 1861–1921 (Prague: Nakladatelství Lidové noviny, 2015), 188–89. 106. Joseph Wechsberg, The Vienna I Knew: Memories of a European Childhood (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1979), 103–20. 107. Michael K. Silber, “From Tolerated Aliens to Citizen-Soldiers: Jewish Military Ser vice in the Era of Joseph II,” in Constructing Nationalities in East Central Europe, ed. Pieter M. Judson and Marsha L. Rozenblit (New York: Berghahn Books, 2005), 19–36; Erwin A. Schmidl, Habsburgs Jüdische Soldaten 1788–1918 (Vienna: Böhlau, 2014); István Deák, Beyond Nationalism: A Social and Political History of the Habsburg Officer Corps, 1848–1918 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990). 108. Quoted in Marsha L. Rozenblit, Reconstructing a National Identity: The Jews of Habsburg Austria during World War I (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 46. 109. Walter Mentzel, Kriegsflüchtlinge in Cisleithanien im Ersten Weltkrieg, unpublished dissertation, University of Vienna, 1997; Beatrix Hoffmann-Holter, “Abreisendmachung”: Jüdische Kriegsflüchtlinge in Wien 1914 bis 1923 (Vienna: Böhlau, 1995). 110. Rozenblit, Reconstructing a National Identity, 69; see also Jiří Kuděla, “Galician and East European Refugees in the Historic Lands: 1914–1916,” Review of the Society for the History of Czechoslovak Jews 4 (1991–92), 15–32. 111. Eduard Lederer, “Židé haličtí a židé u nás,” Rozvoj: List Svazu Čechů-židů, July 24, 1915, 1–2. 112. Rozenblit, Reconstructing a National Identity, 71. 113. Abraham Steigler, “Kulturträger,” Selbstwehr, June 11, 1915, 1. For the perception of Jewish refugees in Austria and the broader context of east-central Europe, see also Sarah Panter, Jüdische Erfahrungen und Loyalitätskonflikte im Ersten Weltkrieg, Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für Europäische Geschichte Mainz 235 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014), esp. 115–30. 114. On the everyday history of the Bohemian Lands during World War I, see Rudolf Kučera, Rationed Life: Science, Everyday Life and Working- Class Politics in the Bohemian Lands, 1914–1918 (New York: Berghahn, 2016), and Ivan Šedivý, Češi, české země a velká válka, 1914–1918 (Prague: Lidové noviny, 2001).

Chapter 5 1. Wilma Iggers and Georg Iggers, Two Lives in Uncertain Times: Facing the Challenges of the 20th Century as Scholars and Citizens (New York: Berghahn Books, 2006); Wilma Iggers, “Geschichte einer ländlichen jüdischen Familie zwischen Deutschen und Tschechen,” in Juden zwischen Deutschen und Tschechen: Sprachliche und kulturelle Identitäten in Böhmen 1800–1945, ed. Marek Nekula and Walter Koschmal (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2006), 19–32. 2. Ruth Klinger, Zeugin einer Zeit (2d ed., self-published, 1979). 3. Sarah Lemmen, “Locating the Nation in a Globalizing World: Debates on the Global Position of Interwar Czechoslova kia,” Bohemia 56.2 (2016), 456–73. 4. Hillel J. Kieval, “Negotiating Czechoslova kia: The Challenges of Jewish Citizenship in a Multiethnic Nation-State,” in Insiders and Outsiders: Dilemmas of East European Jewry, ed. Richard I. Cohen, Jonathan Frankel, and Stefani Hoffman (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2010), 103–19. 5. Lisa Silverman, Becoming Austrians: Jews and Culture between the World Wars (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). 6. Michal Frankl and Miloslav Szabó, Budování státu bez antisemitismu? Násilí, diskurz loajality a vznik Československa (Prague: Nakladatelství Lidové noviny, 2015). 7. Ibid., 98–138. 8. Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People, Jerusalem, IKG Wien, A/W 325. 9. Frankl and Szabó, Budování státu bez antisemitismu?, 83–88.

Notes to Pages 163–166

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10. Zdeněk Fišer, Poslední pogrom. Události v Holešově ve dnech 3. a 4. prosince 1918 a jejich historické pozadí (Kroměříž: Katos, 1996). 11. Ines Koeltzsch, “Antijüdische Straßengewalt und die semantische Konstruktion des ‘Anderen’ im Prag der Ersten Republik,” Judaica Bohemiae 46.1 (2011), 73–99. 12. David Rechter, The Jews of Vienna and the First World War (London: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2001), 161–86; Marcos Silber, “Nationalräte,” Enzyklopädie jüdischer Geschichte und Kultur, vol. 4, ed. Dan Diner (Stuttgart: Metzler, 2013), 328–37. 13. Kateřina Čapková, Czechs, Germans, Jews? National Identity and the Jews of Bohemia (New York: Berghahn, 2012), 27–8; Hillel J. Kieval, The Making of Czech Jewry: National Conflict and Jewish Society in Bohemia, 1870–1918 (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 188–89; Tatjana Lichtenstein, Zionists in Interwar Czechoslovakia: Minority Nationalism and the Politics of Belonging (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2016), 62–75; Aharon Moshe Rabinowicz, “The Jewish Minority,” in The Jews of Czechoslovakia: Historical Studies and Surveys, vol. 1 (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1968), 155–61. 14. Čapková, Czechs, Germans, Jews? 28–41; Ines Koeltzsch, Geteilte Kulturen: Eine Geschichte der tschechisch-jüdisch- deutschen Beziehungen in Prag 1918–1938 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2012), 29–78. 15. Jens Budischowsky, Die staatskirchenrechtliche Stellung der österreichischen Israeliten (Vienna: Manzsche Verlags- und Universitätsbuchhandlung, 1995), 17–26. 16. Marsha L. Rozenblit, Reconstructing a National Identity: The Jews of Habsburg Austria during World War I (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 144–50. For Slovakia, see Miloslav Szabó, “Von Worten zu Taten”: Die slowakische Nationalbewegung und der Antisemitismus 1875–1922 (Berlin: Metropol, 2014), 290–98; Rebekah Klein-Pejšová, Mapping Jewish Loyalties in Interwar Slovakia (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2015), 25–32. 17. Kieval, “Negotiating Czechoslova kia”; Lichtenstein, Zionists in Interwar Czechoslovakia, 11. 18. Ines Koeltzsch, “Židé a židovství,” Encyklopedie T. G. Masaryka, ed. Masaryk Institute and Archives (forthcoming). 19. Oskar Donath to Tomáš G. Masaryk, March 1, 1920, AÚTGM, TGM—KOR II, sl. 11, k. 701. On cultural mediation among Jewish intellectuals, see Ines Koeltzsch, “Utopia as Everyday Practice: Jewish Intellectuals and Cultural Translation in Prague before and after 1933,” in Catastrophe and Utopia: Jewish Intellectuals in Central and Eastern Europe in the 1930s and 1940s, ed. Ferenc Laczó and Joachim von Puttkamer (Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2018), 15–44. 20. “Am Tage der Präsidentenwahl,” in Jung Juda 35.6 (June 1, 1934), 66. For parallels between the Masaryk cult and that of Franz Joseph, see Andrea Orzoff, Battle for the Castle: The Myth of Czechoslovakia in Europe, 1914–1948 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 120–21. On Jung Juda, see also Chapter 4 in this volume. 21. Hillel J. Kieval, “Masaryk and Czech Jewry: The Ambiguities of Friendship,” in T. G. Masaryk (1850–1937): Thinker and Politician, ed. Stanley B. Winters (London: Macmillan, 1990), 302– 27, and idem, Languages of Community: The Jewish Experience in the Czech Lands (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 198–216; Koeltzsch, “Židé a židovství”; and Martin J. Wein, “ ‘Masaryk und die Judenʼ: Das Ende der Romantisierung?” in Religion und Nation: Tschechen, Deutsche und Slowaken im 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Kristina Kaiserová, Eduard Nižňanský, and Martin Schulze Wessel (Düsseldorf: Klartext, 2015), 111–24. 22. Archiv Židovského muzea v Praze (AŽMP), fond Varia, sign. 93680, Freundschaftsbuch von Eva Nettlová, (Prag) 1932; AŽMP, fond Varia, sign. 5066, Freundschaftsbuch von Gerda Popprová (Tábor, Praha-Libeň) 1932 (until 1938). 23. Ilse Weber to Lilian von Löwenadler, March 12, 1934, and September 24, 1937, in Ilse Weber, Wann wohl das Leid ein Ende hat: Briefe und Gedichte aus Thersienstadt, ed. Ulrike Migdal (Munich: Hanser, 2008), 17, 50. 24. Jana Osterkamp and Martin Schulze Wessel, “Exploring Loyalty,” in Exploring Loyalty, ed. Osterkamp and Schulze Wessel (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2017), 1–16, esp. 2–9.

338

Notes to Pages 166–172

25. Rogers Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 66; Osterkamp and Schulze Wessel, Exploring Loyalty, 8. 26. On the importance of local dynamics for the making of hybrid political and cultural identities for (not only) Hungarian Jews in Czechoslova kia, see above all Éva Kovács, “Die Ambivalenz der Assimilation: Postmoderne oder hybride Identitäten des ungarischen Judentums,” in Habsburg postcolonial: Machtstrukturen und kollektives Gedächtnis, ed. Johannes Feichtinger et al. (Innsbruck: Studienverlag, 2003), 197–208; as one biographical example, see Jan Láníček, Arnošt Frischer and the Jewish Politics of Early 20th- Century Europe (London: Bloomsbury, 2016). 27. Vít Strobach, Židé: národ, rasa, třída: Sociální hnutí a “židovská otázka” v českých zemích 1861–1921 (Prague: Nakladatelství Lidové noviny, 2015), 186–202. 28. Lichtenstein, Zionists in Interwar Czechoslovakia, 273. 29. Čapková, Czechs, Germans, Jews? 221–25; Marie Crhová, “Jewish Politics in Central Europe: The Case of the Jewish Party in Interwar Czechoslova kia,” Jewish Studies at the Central European University 2 (1999–2001), 271–301; Lichtenstein, Zionists in Interwar Czechoslovakia, esp. 273–276; Aharon Moshe K. Rabinowicz, “The Jewish Party: A Struggle for National Recognition, Representation and Autonomy,” in The Jews of Czechoslovakia: Historical Studies and Surveys, vol. 2 (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1971), 253–346. 30. Láníček, Arnošt Frischer; Daniel Baránek, Židé na Ostravsku: Dynamika a pluralita židovské společnosti 1832–1942 (Ostrava: Židovská obec v Ostravě, 2017), 156–61. 31. Čapková, Czechs, Germans, Jews? 214–19; Mirjam Zadoff, Next Year in Marienbad: The Lost Worlds of Jewish Spa Culture (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), 179–99. 32. Čapková, Czechs, Germans, Jews? 169–240. 33. Dimitry Shumsky, Zweisprachigkeit und binationale Idee: Der Prager Zionismus 1900–1930 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013). 34. Handbuch österreichischer Autorinnen und Autoren jüdischer Herkunft 18. bis 20. Jahrhundert, vol. 2 (Munich: Saur, 2002), 732/5425. 35. Lichtenstein, Zionists in Interwar Czechoslovakia, 269–70; Hana Hříbková, “Šoa v díle Jiřího Weila,” in Cizí a blízcí: Židé, literatura, kultura v českých zemích ve 20. století, ed. Jiří Holý (Prague: Akropolis, 2016), 681–728; Pavel Janáček, “Jiří Weil,” in Slovník české literatury po roce 1945, http:// www.slovnikceskeliteratury.cz/showContent.jsp?docId​= ​902 (accessed February 28, 2018). 36. Fritz Beer, Hast du auf Deutsche geschossen, Grandpa? Fragmente einer Lebensgeschichte (Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag, 1992); Daniela Bartáková, “Die jüdische Pionierjugend in der Ersten Tschechoslowakischen Republik zwischen Zionismus und Kommunismus,” in Jugend in der Tschechoslowakei: Konzepte und Lebenswelten (1918–1989), ed. Christiane Brenner et  al. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015), 133–52. 37. Lichtenstein, Zionists in Interwar Czechoslovakia, 269–314; Bartáková, “Die jüdische Pionierjugend”; Strobach, Židé, 198–218. 38. Národní archiv v Praze (NA in Prague), Ministerstvo vnitra (225), N/9/11, kart. 841–5, and Policejní ředitelství Praha II, 1931–40, G 993/32, kart. 6103. This and other examples described in this section are analyzed in detail in Kateřina Čapková and Michal Frankl, Unsichere Zuflucht: Die Tschechoslowakei und ihre Flüchtlinge aus NS-Deutschland und Österreich 1933–1938 (Cologne: Böhlau, 2012). See also Michal Frankl, “Prejudiced Asylum: Czechoslovak Refugee Policy, 1918–60,” Journal of Contemporary History 49.3 (July 1, 2014), 537–55. 39. On gender and citizenship, see Melissa Feinberg, Elusive Equality: Gender, Citizenship, and the Limits of Democracy in Czechoslovakia, 1918–1950 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2006), 72–98. 40. NA in Prague, Policejní ředitelství Praha II, 1931–40, E 495/15, kart. 5607; and G 580/30, kart. 6035, Ernst Goldstein. 41. NA in Prague, Policejní ředitelství Praha II, 1931–40, E 495/15, kart. 5607, Helena Ehrlich. 42. Michal Frankl, “No Man’s Land: Refugees, Moving Borders, and Shifting Citizenship in 1938 East-Central Europe,” Jahrbuch des Simon-Dubnow-Instituts 16 (2017), 247–66.

Notes to Pages 172–178

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43. Ferdinand Peroutka, “Něco o českém národu a o židech,” Přítomnost 15.3 (January 19, 1938), 33–34; idem, “Pryč s humanitou—a co potom?” Přítomnost 15.43 (October 26, 1938), 673–74. 44. NA in Prague, Ministerstvo školství, kart. 3917, 47 VIII, Slovensko, A, Odborný rada Dr. Eduard Lederer podává zprávu, April 7, 1920, quotations pp. 5 and 15. 45. See Jonas Kreppel, Juden und Judentum von heute: Ein Handbuch (Zurich: Almathea-Verlag, 1925); I. Koralnik, “Untersuchungen über die Zahl der Juden in Europa Anfang 1931,” Zeitschrift für Demographie und Statistik der Juden 6.3 (1931), 33–43. 46. Silesia had become an administrative part of Moravia in 1927. 47. Jana Vobecká, Demographic Avant- Garde: Jews in Bohemia between the Enlightenment and the Shoah (Budapest: CEU Press, 2013). For a contemporary perspective with anti-Jewish, antimodernist undertones, see also Antonín Boháč, “Přehled nejdůležitejších výsledků posledního sčítání lidu: Povolání izraelitů v Čechách,” Statistický obzor 5 (1934), 192–200. 48. Gustav Fleischmann, “Židé v československém státě podle sčítání lidu,” Bʼnai Bʼrith Monatsblätter der Großloge für den Čechoslovakischen Staat 13.8 (1934), 363–64. 49. Čapková, Czechs, Germans, Jews? 19. 50. Zdeněk Lepař, “Statistika Židů v Československé republice (Tabulky k článku),” Sborník České společnosti zeměvědné 31 (1925), 262–63. 51. No socioeconomic data on the Jewish population from the census of 1930 are available. See Boháč, “Přehled nejdůležitejších výsledků posledního sčítání lidu.” 52. Herbert Philippsthal, “Die Juden in der Tschechoslowakei. Zahl, Verteilung, Berufsgruppierung,” in Zeitschrift für Demographie und Statistik der Juden 3.1–3 (1926), 11–15. 53. Luděk Dux, “Přeskupení v povolání (Výsledky dotazníkové akce),” B’nai B’rith Monatsblätter 8.2 (1929), 45–53. 54. Boháč, “Přehled nejdůležitejších výsledků posledního sčítání lidu”; for a critical comment on this debate, see Bedřich [Friedrich] Thieberger, “Zánik židovstva v Čechách? Několik zásadních poznámek k statistickým předpovědím,” B’nai B’rith 13.7 (1934), 275–77. 55. Koeltzsch, Geteilte Kulturen, 31–46. 56. Ilse Weber to Lilian von Löwenadler, Witkowitz, June 24, 1936, in Weber, Wann wohl das Leid ein Ende hat, 30. 57. Marsha L. Rozenblit, “Jews, German Culture, and the Dilemma of National Identity: The Case of Moravia,” Jewish Social Studies 20.1 (2013), 77–120. 58. Lichtenstein, Zionists in Interwar Czechoslovakia, 119. 59. AŽMP, Židovská náboženská obec Příbram, sign. 88593, Židovská ústředna pro sociální péči v republice Československé, Zpráva o činnosti za rok 1930, 1. 60. I. Koralnik, “Zum jüdischen Studentenproblem in Ost- und Mitteleuropa,” Zeitschrift für Demographie und Statistik der Juden 5.1 (1930), 7–14. 61. Koralnik, “Untersuchungen über die Zahl der Juden in Europa Anfang 1931,” 43; “Jüdische Auswanderung aus der Tschechoslowakei im Jahre 1930,” Die Neue Welt, August 7, 1931, 5. 62. Čapková, Czechs, Germans, Jews? 23–24; idem, “Raum und Zeit als Faktoren der nationalen Identifikation der Prager Juden,” in Praha–Prag 1900–1945: Literaturstadt zweier Sprachen, ed. Peter Becher and Anna Knechtel (Passau: Stutz, 2010), 21–31. 63. Beer, Hast Du auf Deutsche geschossen, Grandpa? 17–42. 64. AŽMP, fond Varia, for example, sign. 84908/3, Kohn, Leopold, Smuteční album, 1890, and ibid., sign. 84995/1, Fröhlich, David, Smuteční pamětní kniha, 1915. 65. AŽMP, fond Varia, sign. 84993/2, Eisenbruch, Regina, Smuteční album, 1938. Only the Kaddish was printed in Hebrew characters, along with an Ashkenazi transliteration, but without a translation. 66. Ibid. 67. NA in Prague, Ministerstvo školství, kart. 3918, 47 VIII, Morava, President Náboženské obce židovské v Moravské Ostravě jménem náboženských obcí židovských na Moravě, October 31, 1923. 68. Čapková, Czechs, Germans, Jews? 153–56. 69. Ernst Frischer, “Auf dem Wege zur Verwirklichung des zionistischen Kultusgemeindeprogramms,” Jüdischer Kalender für die Čechoslovakische Republik 5683, 1922–23, 60–72.

340

Notes to Pages 179–185

70. Lichtenstein, Zionists in Interwar Czechoslovakia, 140–89; Gustav Fleischmann, “The Religious Congregation, 1918–1938,” in The Jews of Czechoslovakia, vol. 1 (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1968), 267–329, here 271–72. 71. Václav Paleček, Die israelitische Religionsgesellschaft (Brno: Rudolf M. Rohrer, 1932), 36. 72. Fleischmann, “The Religious Congregation,” 318–25; Budischowsky, Die staatskirchenrechtliche Stellung, 24–25. 73. Michael Brenner, The Renaissance of Jewish Culture in Weimar Germany (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996). 74. Das jüdische Prag: Eine Sammelschrift 1917 (Prague: Verlag der Selbstwehr, 1916); “Das jüdische Prag: Ergänzungsheft,” Selbstwehr, January 5, 1917. 75. AŽMP, Židovská náboženská obec Brandýs nad Labem, sign. 70627, Péče o válečné uprchlíky, 1917, Letter from Alfred Engel, [1917]. 76. Lichtenstein, Zionists in Interwar Czechoslovakia, 190–225; Marsha L. Rozenblit, “Creating Jewish Space: German-Jewish Schools in Moravia,” Austrian History Yearbook 44 (2013), 108–47; Mirek Němec, “Zwischen Prag, Brünn und Mukačevo: Die Renaissance des jüdischen Schulwesens in der Tschechoslowakei,” in Jugend in der Tschechoslowakei, ed. Brenner et al., 101–32. 77. Čapková, Czechs, Germans, Jews? 154, and AŽMP, fond Richard Feder, with numerous autobiographical sources. 78. AŽMP, fond Gustav Sicher, Dr. (1880–1960), sign. 16, Varia, Zpráva rabína p. Dra. G. Sichra o zkouškách v mukačevském kursu pro výchovu kultových funkcionařů, [1934]. 79. Ibid., 2. 80. Ibid., 4. 81. For this general tendency, see Stanislav Holubec, “Czech Perceptions of Sub-Carpathian Rus and Its Modernization,” in Mastery and Lost Illusions: Space and Time in the Modernization of Eastern and Central Europe, ed. Włodzimierz Borodziej, Stanislav Holubec, and Joachim von Puttkamer (Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg 2014), 223–50. 82. Marie Schmolková, “O sociální práci,” Židovský kalendář 18 (1937–38), 114–23. 83. Paul Steindler, “Die jüdische Fürsorgezentrale für die čechoslovakische Republik,” Hicklʼs jüdischer Volkskalender 23 (1923–24), 95–99. 84. Otakar Kraus, “Židovská ústředna pro sociální péči v Republice československé,” Židovský kalendář 4 (1923–24), 114–18. 85. AŽMP, Židovská náboženská obec Příbram, sign. 88593, Židovská ústředna pro sociální péči v republice Československé, Zpráva o činnosti za rok 1930, signed by Josef Popper; Čapková and Frankl, Unsichere Zuflucht, 194–96. 86. Ibid., 232–33; Čapková, Czechs, Germans, Jews? 235–40; Lichtenstein, Zionists in Interwar Czechoslovakia, 283–87; Moravský zemský archiv, B 40, kart. 254, sign.12325, Pracovní kolonie židovské mládeže v Krnově, October 17, 1936. 87. Čapková and Frankl, Unsichere Zuflucht, 105–29. 88. In Memoriam Marie Schmolka (London: Marie Schmolka Society of Women Zionists from Czechoslova kia, 1944). 89. See Raffaella Sgubin, “Frauen und Arbeit im Ersten Weltkrieg: Aspekte der Bekleidung,” in Krieg und Kleider: Mode und Grafik zur Zeit des Ersten Weltkriegs, 1914–1918, ed. Adelheid Rasche (Leipzig: Seemann Henschel, 2014), 38–47. 90. Vobecká, Demographic Avant- Garde, 119. 91. N. N., “Bücher für unsere Ferien: Frauen—Ereignisse,” Blätter für die jüdische Frau 9.6 (June 14, 1935), 1–3. 92. N. N., “Die Frau im Recht (Ringwald, ‘Familie Heberlin’),” in “Bücher für unsere Ferien,” 1–2. 93. Edith Ringwald, Familie Heberlin: Wirtschaft und Recht als Erlebnis (Basle: Emil Birkhäuser & Cie, 1935). 94. See the letter to the community board written by Marie Schmolka and Irma Polák, who fought for women’s right to vote. It was published by the Blätter für die jüdische Frau in April 1935.

Notes to Pages 185–191

341

N. N., “Die jüdischen Frauen verlangen das Wahlrecht in der Prager Kultusgemeinde,” Blätter für die jüdische Frau 9.4 (April 16, 1935), 4. 95. The first lessons were published in 1934 and continued in 1935. 96. “4 Fragen am Sedertisch . . .”, Blätter für die jüdische Frau 9.4 (April 16, 1935), 3. 97. Beer, Hast du auf Deutsche geschossen, Grandpa? 95. See also Bartáková, “Die jüdische Pionierjugend,” 133. 98. For more on Goldstücker, Chapter 7 in this volume. 99. Lichtenstein, Zionists in Interwar Czechoslovakia, 281–87; Čapková, Czechs, Germans, Jews? 225–32. 100. Milena Jesenská, “Franz Kafka,” Národní listy, June 6, 1924, quoted in Milena Jesenská, Křížovatky (Výbor z díla), ed. Marie Jirásková (Prague: Torst, 2016), 299. 101. Michael P. Steinberg, Judaism Musical and Unmusical (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 18, quoted in Silverman, Becoming Austrians, 8. 102. On the relationship between Jesenská and Kafka and its cultural contexts, see Derek Sayer, Prague, Capital of the Twentieth Century: A Surrealist History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013), 122–30. 103. “Gastspiel Sakaschansky,” in Prager Tagblatt, May 18, 1932, 6. 104. Jindřich Toman, “Renarrating the Rabbi and His Golem in Czech,” in Path of Life: Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel, ca. 1525–1609, ed. Alexandr Putík and Olga Sixtová (Prague: Academia, 2009), 315–42. On Werich, see Chapter 7. 105. Silverman, Becoming Austrians. 106. Koeltzsch, Geteilte Kulturen, 319–31. 107. Ladislaus Benedek, Handbuch für Tourenfahrten mit Automobil in der Slowakei und Podkarpatská Rus (Bratislava: Typographia Buchdruckerei, 1927), 5. 108. Ibid. 109. Hans Lichtwitz, “Karpathorussische Rhapsodie,” Jüdischer Almanach auf das Jahr 5696 [1935–36], 101–15. 110. Ibid., 109–12. 111. Ibid., 112. 112. Ibid., 114–15. 113. Ivan Olbracht, Nikola Šuhaj loupežník (Prague: Sfinx, 1933); screenplay for Marijka nevěrnice (1934), published in English as Nikola Šuhaj, Robber, trans. Roberta Finlayson-Samsour (Prague: Artia, 1954). 114. Ivan Olbracht, Země bez jména: Reportáže z Podkarpatska (Prague: Otto Girgal, 1932), and Hory a staletí: Kniha reportáží z Podkarpatska (Prague: Melantrich, 1935). 115. Ivan Olbracht, Golet v údolí (Prague: Melantrich, 1937), published in English as The Bitter and the Sweet, trans. Iris Urwin (New York: Crown [1967, © 1964]). 116. Part of The Bitter and the Sweet (Golet v údolí), but also published separately in English as The Sorrowful Eyes of Hannah Karajich, trans. Iris Urwin Lewitová; intro. Miroslav Holub (Budapest: Central European University Press, 1999). 117. AŽMP, Svaz pražských židovských náboženských obcí, 1926–1941, Památková akce, Zprávy dozorčích rabinů o inspekčních cestách, 1927–1929, sign. 34572, Richard Feder, Report, May 1929, 3. 118. Die jüdischen Denkmäler in der Tschechoslowakei (Prague: Denkmalskommission des Obersten Rates der jüdischen Kultusgemeinde-Verbände in Böhmen, Mähren und Schlesien, 1933). 119. Hugo Gold, ed., Die Juden und Judengemeinden Mährens in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart (Brno: Jüdischer Buch- und Kunstverlag, 1929); idem, Die Juden und Judengemeinde Bratislavas in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart (Brno: Jüdischer Buch- und Kunstverlag, 1929); idem, Die Juden und Judengemeinden Böhmens in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart (Brno: Jüdischer Buch- und Kunstverlag, 1934).

342

Notes to Pages 191–201

120. AŽMP, Židovská náboženská obec Příbram, sign. 88582, Svaz českých náboženských obcí židovských Židovské náboženské obci v Příbrami, October 4, 1929. 121. Magda Veselská, “Jewish and Related Museums in Czechoslova kia in the First Republic,” Judaica Bohemiae 40 (2004), 78–92. 122. Magda Veselská, Archa paměti: Cesta pražského muzea pohnutým 20. stoletím (Prague: Academia, 2012), 10–52. 123. Sefer zikaron le-fetihat ha-muze’on ha-yehudi be-k“ k“ N“s /Památník Židovského ústředního musea pro Moravsko- Slezsko/Gedenkbuch im Auftrage des Kuratoriums herausgegeben von Prof. Dr. Alfred Engel (Mikulov: Nekudah, 1936). 124. Magda Veselská, “Židovské ústřední museum pro Moravsko-Slezsko v Mikulově,” in RegioM: Sborník regionálního muzea v Mikulově 2 (2005), 80–87; Falk Wiesemann, “Das Jüdische Zentralmuseum für Mähren-Schlesien in Nikolsburg,” Wiener Jahrbuch für jüdische Geschichte, Kultur und Museumswesen 1 (1994–95), 107–31. 125. Guido Kisch, “Historia Judaica 1938–1961: An Historical Account and Reminiscences of the Retiring Editor,” in Der Lebensweg eines Rechtshistorikers: Erinnerungen (Sigmaringen: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 1975), 221–32. 126. Ilse Weber to Lilian von Löwenadler, October 10, 1938, and December 1, 1938, in Weber, Wann wohl das Leid, 70–76. 127. Iggers, “Geschichte einer ländlichen jüdischen Familie,” 30. 128. Frankl and Szabó, Budování státu, 305–8.

Chapter 6 1. Police report about the August 13, 1939, meeting of the representatives of the Jewish religious communities of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, Národní archiv v Praze (NA), fond (f.) Presidium ministerská rada (PMR), karton (k.) 3417, fol. 227. 2. Miroslav Kárný first used the term in reference to the Protectorate. Miroslav Kárný, “Konečné řešení”: Genocida českých židů v německé protektorátní politice (Prague: Academia, 1991), 9. 3. Kárný, “Konečné řešení,” 18. 4. Ibid., 9. 5. Werner Röder and Herbert A. Strauss, eds., with the assistance of Dietrich Marc Schneider and Louise Forsyth, Biographisches Handbuch der deutschsprachigen Emigration nach 1933–1945, vol. 1: Politik, Wirtschaft, öffentliches Leben (Munich: Institut für Zeitgeschichte, 1980), 821; Magda Veselská, “Židovské ústřední museum pro Moravsko-Slezsko v Mikulově,” RegioM: Sborník regionálního muzea v Mikulově 2 (2005), 80–87. 6. Jan Machala, “ ‘Unbearable Jewish Houses of Prayer’: The Nazi Destruction of Synagogues Based on Examples from Central Moravia,” Judaica Bohemiae 49:1 (2014), 67. 7. Max Mannheimer, Spätes Tagebuch: Theresienstadt—Auschwitz—Warschau—Dachau (Munich: Pendo, 2009), 30–31. 8. Kárný, “Konečné řešení,” 9. 9. Petition from the Uherský Brod Czechoslovak Legionary Community, Gymnastic Union “Sokol,” and Union of the Czechoslovak “Orel” to the City Council and District Office in Uherský Brod (Oct. 10, 1938), Státní okresní archiv (SOkA) Uherské Hradiště, f. OÚ Uherský Brod pres., k. 607, č. 1204/38, fol. 9–10. 10. NA, f. Prezidium ministerstva vnitra—Archiv ministerstva vnitra (PMV-AMV), sign. 207939-10, fol. 19. 11. Heda Kaufmannová, Léta 1938–1945: Válečné vzpomínky (Prague: Ústav pro soudobé dějiny AV ČR, 1999), 23. 12. Ruth Bondy, “Elder of the Jews”: Jakob Edelstein of Theresienstadt, trans. Everlyn Abel (Hebrew ed., 1981; New York: Grove Press, 1989), 102.

Notes to Pages 201–204

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13. “Situační zpráva,”  Četnická stanice Kutná Hora, čís. jedn. 76  dův./39 (6 Feb.  1939), SOkA Kutná Hora, f. OÚ Kutná Hora, pres. spis. 183, k. 71, fol. 34; Dagmar Lieblová-Fantlová, “Další střípky dávné mozaiky,” in Rozetřít věčnost na barvy: Obrázky ze života Židů na Kutnohorsku, ed. Marek Lauermann and Vendula Borůvková (Kutná Hora: Klub rodáků a přátel Kutné Hory, 2009), 45. 14. Headquarters of the Czechoslovak Lawyers memorandum to the Minister of Interior (October 14, 1938), NA, f. Ministerstvo vnitra—Stará registratura (MV-SR), k. 4372, sign. 1/21/5, fol. 1. 15. Livia Rothkirchen, “The Jews of Bohemia and Moravia: 1938–1945” in The Jews of Czechoslovakia: Historical Studies and Surveys, vol. 3, ed. Avigdor Dagan (Philadelphia: Society for the History of Czechoslovak Jews, 1984), 5. 16. Beran claimed that the government “will not be hostile to Jews who are long settled in its territory and who have a positive relationship with the needs of the state.” Transcript of the 156th Session of the National Assembly of the Czechoslovak Republic (December 13, 1938), http:// www.psp.cz/eknih/1935ns/ps/stenprot/156schuz/s156003.htm (accessed January 22, 2019). 17. “Židovští příslušníci ve státní službě,” Ministry of Transportation circular no. 17.206-I/11939 (Feb. 25, 1939), NA, f. PMR, k. 3420, fol. 154–57. 18. Marcel Sladkowski, David Valůšek, “Příběh Desidera Ornsteina,” Výkaz o odchodu židovských lékařů v Baťově nemocnici roku 1937 až 1939, https://www.holocaust.cz/dejiny/soa/zide-v-ceskych -zemich-a-konecne-reseni-zidovske-otazky/pribeh-desidera-ornsteina/ (accessed April 20, 2019). 19. Kaufmannová’s boss soon lost his job and was ultimately executed for his role in the Czech underground. Kaufmannová, Léta 1938–1945, 26. 20. Laura E. Brade and Rose Holmes, “Troublesome Sainthood: Nicholas Winton and the Contested History of Child Rescue in Prague, 1938–1940,” History and Memory 29.1 (Spring–Summer 2017), 21. 21. Livia Rothkirchen, The Jews of Bohemia and Moravia: Facing the Holocaust (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, and Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2005), 83. 22. Karel Řeháček, “Sluncem a stínem: Plzeňský arciděkan Antonín Havelka,” Minulostí Západočeského kraje 48 (2013), 151; Věra Špirková, Židovská komunita v Plzni (Domažlice: Nakladatelství Českého lesa, 2000), 78. 23. Oskar Strauss written memoirs: Archiv Židovského muzea v Praze (AŽMP), Oddělení pro dějiny šoa, Materiály nasbírané v souvislosti s nahráváním rozhovorů s pamětníky, Českoslovenští Židé ve Skandinávii, Oskar Strauss, p. 6. 24. Rothkirchen, The Jews of Bohemia and Moravia, 99. 25. Silvestr Nováček, Nacistické “konečné řešení” židovské otázky v Ivančicích (Brno: Okresní muzeum Brno-venkov, 1984), 25–26. 26. A Czech worker died in the demolition of the synagogue—the only death attributable to the attack. Leopold Blau survived the attack and fled with his wife to Palestine several months later. Ladislav Baletka and Jaroslav Klenovský, “Osud vsetínské synagogy,” Židé a Morava 11 (2005), 168–69. 27. Michal Kadlec, “Český fašismus v období protektorátu v Českých Budějovicích” (Master’s thesis, Masarykova univerzita, Brno, 2014), 23–25. 28. “Vorschriften über Juden und jüdische Mischlinge,” Office of the Premier to the Office of the Reichsprotektor (July 24, 1940), NA, f. ÚŘP, k. 390, fol. 398–402. 29. “Zákaz výkonu lékařské prakse lékařům-nearijcům ve veřejných a zdravotních orgánech,” Presidium of the Ministry of Social Welfare to the Provincial Offices in Prague and Brno (March 20, 1939), NA, f. PMR, k. 3417, fol. 517–18. 30. “Provozování realitního a úvěrového jednatelství nearijci,” Headquarters of the Union of the Association of Real Estate and Mortage Brokers in the Czechoslovak Republic (March 21, 1939), NA, f. PMR, k. 3417, fol. 507–8. 31. Petition of the Presidium of the Engineering Chamber Prague to the Presidium of the Ministerial Council (March 21, 1939), NA, f. PMR, k. 3417, fol. 567–69.

344

Notes to Pages 204–207

32. Marcel Sladkowski, David Valůšek, https://www.holocaust.cz/dejiny/soa/zide-v-ceskych -zemich-a-konecne-reseni-zidovske-otazky/pribeh-desidera-ornsteina/ (accessed April 20, 2019). 33. Petition to the Oberlandrat in Kyjov/Gaya (March 28, 1939); State Secondary School [Státní reálné gymnasium] Kyjov to the District Office Kyjov (April 26, 1939), SOkA Hodonín, f. OÚ-Kyjov pres., k. 31, inv. č. 529. 34. Wolf Gruner, Jewish Forced Labor under the Nazis: Economic Needs and Racial Aims, 1938– 1944, trans. Kathleen M. Dell’Orto (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 143. 35. Jan Vajskebr, “První zatýkací akce německých bezpečnostních složek v Protektorátu Čechy a Morava (tzv. Aktion Gitter),” in Odboj, kolaborace, retribuce, ed. Ivo Pejčoch (Prague: Ministerstvo obrany České republiky, 2010), 18–19, 22–23. 36. Steiner was released immediately, but Schmolka was held at Pankrác Prison and repeatedly interrogated at the “Pečkárna,” the Gestapo headquarters in the confiscated Petschek Bank in Prague. Within two weeks the Germans permitted the reopening of the Palestine Office to facilitate the emigration of Jews from the Protectorate to British Palestine. Bondy, “Elder of the Jews,” 123. 37. Vajskebr, “První zatýkací akce,” 22. 38. Jiří Padevět, Za dráty: Tábory v období 1938–1945 na území dnešní České republiky (Prague: Academia, 2018), 395. 39. Ladislav Vilímek, “Poslední jihlavský rabín Arnold Grünfeld,” in Dotyky: Židé v dějinách Jihlavska, ed. Petr Dvořák (Jihlava: Muzeum Vysočiny a Státní okresní archiv v Jihlavě, 1998), 51–55. 40. Goliath was deported to a gulag in northern Russia, released in an amnesty in 1942, and then sent as part of a Czechoslovak military mission to Kuybyshev, Siberia, where the NKVD arrested him again. He was released only in 1955. Jan Dvořák, Adam Hradilek, and Zdeněk Vališ, “Z táborů Gulagu do Československé vojenské jednotky v SSSR,” in Historie a vojenství 1 (2014), 54; Anna Sedláčková, “Z historie poslední jičínské židovské komunity aneb po stopách zmizelých” (Jičín, 2015), http://www1.fs.cvut.cz/stretech/2015/sbornik _ 2015/0530.pdf (accessed April 20, 2019), 15. 41. At least four Jews from Uherský Brod were arrested and murdered (in Auschwitz, Buchenwald, and Breslau) during the war for having helped to smuggle others across the border into Slovakia. Ludvík Burián, A kdybych prošel celý svět, vás už nepotkám (Uherské Hradiště: Okresní výbor Svazu bojovníků za svobodu, 1990), 85–86. 42. Note to the Ministry of Trade, Industrial Division (received May 20, 1939), NA, f. PMR, k. 3801, fol. 48. 43. František Fischhof, “The Prague Altneuschul During the German Occupation” (Sept. 17, 1945), AŽMP, Oddělení pro dějiny šoa, Dokumenty perzekuce, inv. č. 80—Vzpomínky a literární a odborné zpracování období perzekuce vzniklé po válce, k. 64. 44. Irena Veverková, Cesta bez návratu: Kladenská židovská obec v letech 1853 až 1942 (Kladno: Statutární město Kladno, 2010), 81. 45. Jan Dvořák, Židé v českém Slezsku v době okupace, 1938–1945 (Opava: Slezská univerzita v Opavě, 2015), 133. 46. Kadlec, “Český fašismus v období protektorátu v Českých Budějovicích,” 36–40. 47. “Lagebericht” Pol.-Batl. IV/2 an Polizei—Regiment 2, in Brünn (June 19, 1939), NA, f. ÚŘPAMV, sign. 284–2, fol. 100–101. 48. “Výbuch v pražské kavárně,” Národní politika 57:170 (June 19, 1939), 3; Rothkirchen, The Jews of Bohemia and Moravia, 101. 49. “Der Reichsprotektor zieht am 21. Juni 1939 die Kompetenzen zur Enteignung der jüdischen Bevölkerung an sich,” doc. 247 in Die Verfolgung und Ermordung der europäischen Juden durch das nationalsozialistische Deutschland. Band 3: Deutsches Reich und Protektorat Böhmen und Mähren, September 1939– September 1941 (VEJ), ed. Andrea Löw (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012), 593–96. 50. “Reichsprotektor von Neurath ruft am 15. Juli 1939 die Zentralstelle für jüdische Auswanderung in Prag ins Leben,” doc. 252, in Löw, VEJ, Bd. 3, 609–10. 51. Kaufmannová, Léta 1938–1945, 56.

Notes to Pages 207–212

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52. “Das Innenministerium der tschechischen Protektoratsregierung erteilt am 3. August 1939 Anordnungen zur Separierung der jüdischen Bevölkerung,” Doc. 256 in Löw, VEJ, Bd. 3, 616–18. 53. “10 Minuten von Prag . . . ,” Prager Abend (September 11, 1939), NA, f. MZV-VA I, k. 2321, sign. N7. 54. Alexandr Brummer and Michal Konečný, Brno nacistické: Průvodce městem (Brno: Host, 2013), 46–47. 55. “Omezení přístupu Židů do divadla v Kolíně,” OÚ Kolín (January 19, 1940) to PZÚ Prague, SOkA Kolín, pres. spisy, č. 70/40. 56. Office record of July 12, 1940 official’s visit to the Directorship of the Tramworks, NA, f. MVNR, k. 12041, sign. E-3443, fol. 12; Jüdisches Nachrichtenblatt/Židovské listy 2:37 (Sept. 13, 1940), 5. 57. Wochenbericht der Jüdischen Kultusgemeinde Prag (JKG), May 9–15, 1942, p. 6. 58. Presidium of the Provincial Office in Prague to the Presidium of the Interior Ministry (June 19, 1941) regarding the June 10, 1941, order of the Central Office for Jewish Emigration, NA, f. MV-NR, k. 12042, sign. E-3443, fol. 356. 59. SOkA Jindřichův Hradec, f. OÚ Dačice pres., inv. č. 2691, k. 124, čj. 391/1943. 60. Richard Glazar, one of the few survivors of Treblinka, recalled in his memoirs a tale about the absurd situation of a village with one Jew named Roubíček (a traditional figure in Czech Jewish jokes). The Germans insisted that the local pub display a “Jews Prohibited” sign. By that evening, a sign was hanging on the building with the text, “Roubíček can’t come in.” Richard Glazar, Treblinka, slovo jak z dětské říkanky (Prague: Torst, 1994), 12. 61. Josef Roubíček, the protagonist of Jiří Weil’s novel, Life with a Star, faced exactly that predicament. Jiří Weil, Life with a Star, trans. Rita Klímová with Roslyn Schloss (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1998), 29. 62. Jewish Religious Community Kutná Hora to the District Office Kutná Hora (December 2, 1941), SOkA Kutná Hora, f. OÚ Kutná Hora, “Židé 1941–1942,” sign. VII-25, k. 693e, fol. 2. 63. Richard Feder, Židovská tragédie: Dějství poslední (Kolín: Literární a umělecké sbírky města Kolína, 1947), 23. 64. Feder, Židovská tragédie, 19–20. 65. Pavel Kohn, Kolik naděje má smrt: Židovské děti z poválečné akce „zámky“ vzpomínají (Brno: L. Marek, 2000), 157–58. 66. The police later located Taussig, and the Gestapo sent him to the Small Fortress prison in Theresienstadt and later to Auschwitz, where he perished. Hana Faltysová and Lenka Šindelářová, Hrst vzpomínek . . . židovské rodiny z Holicka (Prague: Devět bran, 2009), 156–59. 67. Norman Eisen, The Last Palace: Europe’s Turbulent Century in Five Lives and One Legendary House (New York: Crown, 2018). 68. Leo Baeck Institute, New York, Rose Walden collection, AR11729, Marie Schwarzová letter to Rose Walden (April 14, 1947), p. 3. From the Rose Walden collection, AR11729, DSCF1523-27. I am grateful to Anna Hájková for this source. 69. “Pobyt židů v lázních a letoviskách a zákaz změny bydliště,” Presidium of the Interior Ministry no. E-3443-2/10-40 to the Presidium of the Provincial Office Prague and Brno (October 10, 1940), NA, f. MV-NR, k. 12041, sign. E-334, fol. 266. 70. Norbert Frýd, Lahvová pošta, aneb konec posledních sto let (Prague: Československý spisovatel, 1971), 119. 71. Ibid., 155. 72. Der Oberlandrat in Iglau, “Volkspolitische Lage und Judenzentrum in Triesch” (April 17, 1941), NA, f. ÚŘP, k. 288. 73. Jaroslav Bránský, Osud Židů z Boskovic a bývalého okresu boskovického, 1939–1945 (Boskovice: Muzeum Boskovicka, 1995), 23–24. 74. See Benjamin Frommer, “ ‘Jewish Homes’ in Prague, Autumn 1940”: https://www.holocaust .cz /en / history/final -solution /the -final -solution - of-the -jewish - question -in -the -bohemian -lands /jewish - communities - between - scylla - and - charybdis /jewish -homes -in -prague - autumn -1940 /#remark-1 (accessed: September 30, 2020).

346

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75. Abteilung I, An den Herrn Unterstaatssekretär (4 April 1941), NA, f. ÚŘP-AMV-114, k. 182, sign. 114-184-5, fol. 51. 76. “Ze synagogy radnice a museum,” Národní politika (September 14, 1939), 4. 77. “Ústředna pro židovské vystěhovalectví v Praze, účast při převodu majektu židovských náboženských obcí,” Interior Ministry to the Presidium of the Provincial Office Prague (April 17, 1940), NA, f. PMV-AMV, 207-939-17, fol. 16. 78. Machala, “ ‘Unbearable Jewish Houses of Prayer,’ ” 80–81. 79. “Seznam židovských synagog a hřbitovů v Čechách a na Moravě, zhanobených po osvobození” (December 22, 1947), NA, f. ÚPV-B, k. 980, sign. 1283. 80. Bondy, “Elder of the Jews,” 138. 81. Petition to the State President in Prague (July 20, 1940), NA, f. MV-SR, sign. 9/50, k. 6582, fol. 97–98. 82. Policejní ředitelství v Praze (October 10, 1939), NA, f. PZÚ-AMV, sign. 207-938-4, fol. 56. 83. Bondy, “Elder of the Jews,” 199. 84. Věra Kohnová, Deník Věry Kohnové (Středokluky: Zdeněk Susa, 2006), 174. 85. Dana Kasperová, Výchova a vzdělávání židovských dětí v protektorátu a v ghettu Terezín. (Prague: Filozofická fakulta Univerzity Karlovy, 2010), 61–65, 71. 86. Interview with Alena B., conducted (October 24, 2014) by Adéla Skálová, pp. 5–6, AŽMP, Oral History Collection, Oral History about the Shoah, Postwar Interview no. 160. 87. Kasperová, Výchova, 60. 88. Ibid., 60–61. 89. Ibid., 82–83. 90. Referát Dr. Arjeho (Dec. 13, 1939), AŽMP, f. ŽNO-Beroun, poř. č. 41, “Oběžníky, 1940–42.” 91. Wochenbericht der Jüdischen Kultusgemeinde Prag (JKG), August 13–19, 1939, 1. 92. Wolf Gruner, Die Judenverfolgung im Protektorat Böhmen und Mähren: Lokale Initiativen, zentrale Entscheidungen, jüdische Antworten 1939–1945 (Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2016), 116. 93. Gruner, Die Judenverfolgung, 125–27. 94. ŽNO, odd. venkovských obcí, Oběžník XV/40 (July 10, 1940), AŽMP, f. ŽNO-Beroun, poř. č. 41, “Oběžníky, 1940–1942.” 95. Wochenbericht der Jüdischen Kultusgemeinde Prag (JKG), Nr. 8, February 17–23, 1940, 15. 96. Gruner, Jewish Forced Labor, 169 97. Kárný, “Konečné řešení,” 69. 98. SOkA Příbram, f. AM Příbram, inv. č. 1054, sign. 1065/78, Okresní úřad Příbram (November 19, 1941). 99. Pracovní nasazení (1941–42), Arbeitseinsatz, letter to the JKG—Jüdische Arbeitszentrale (Nov. 20, 1942), AŽMP, f. ŽNO - Holešov, poř. č. 53, sign. 6265. 100. Úřední korespondence, “Odklízení sněhu,” Židovská náboženská obec Praha, Odbor pro venkovské obce (6 January 1941), AŽMP, f. ŽNO-Slaný, poř. č. 59, sign. 102068. 101. Interview with Ivan F., conducted by Ivan Frič ml., p. Fabry, and Patrik Ouředník, (n.d.), p. 10, AŽMP, Oral History Collection, Interview no. 033. 102. “An die Zentralstelle für jüdische Auswanderung Prag” (Jan. 9, 1941), Wochenbericht der Jüdischen Kultusgemeinde Prag (JKG), Jan. 4–10, 1941, p. 34. 103. “Žadáme židovské odznaky!” Vlajka (9 October 1939), NA, f. PZÚ-AMV, sign. 207-938-4, fol. 41; “Zaveďte povinné označení původu pro nearijce,” Vlajka (12 November 1939), NA, f. PZÚAMV, sign. 207-938-4, fol. 40. 104. Police Directory in Prague (12 Sept. 1940) to the Presidium of the Provincial Office, NA, f. PZÚ-AMV, sign. 207-939-17, fol. 194. 105. “Co víte o Židech?” Venkov (October 3, 1941), NA, f. MZV-VA-I, k. 2322, sign. n7. The series was published as Co víte o Židech? (Podle stejnojmenného cyklu politických přednášek Českého rozhlasu), ed. Alois Kříž (Prague: Orbis, 1941). 106. Wochenbericht der Jüdischen Kultusgemeinde Prag (JKG), Nr. 38, September 13–19, 1941, 8. 107. Toman Brod, Ještě že člověk neví, co ho čeká (Prague: Academia, 2007), 94.

Notes to Pages 219–230

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108. Alena Ludvíková, Až budu velká, napíšu román (Prague: G plus G, 2006), 36. 109. Kaufmannová, Léta 1938–1945, 58. 110. Archive Beit Theresienstadt, no. 181, Věra Segerová, unpublished diary (August 7, 1942), 5. I thank Anna Hájková for this source. 111. Berta Čunátová and Jozefa Hřebejková, “Dva lístky vzpomínek,” in Židé na Milevsku, ed. Vladimíř Šindelář (Milevsko: Milevské muzeum, 2005), 33. 112. Gruner, Die Judenverfolgung, 97. 113. Heda Margolius Kovály, Under a Cruel Star: A Life in Prague 1941–1968 (Cambridge, MA.: Plunkett Lake Press, 1986), 7. 114. Dawid Sierakowiak, The Diary of Dawid Sierakowiak: Five Notebooks from the Łódź Ghetto (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 141. 115. Kárný, “Konečné řešení,” 155. 116. Rothkirchen, The Jews of Bohemia and Moravia, 126. 117. Miloš Kopecký and Pavel Kovář, Miloš Kopecký skutečný (Prague: XYZ, 2015), 41. 118. Zdeněk Pošusta, “Osudy,” Obecní noviny (2017), 14. 119. Interview with Richard S., conducted by Anna Lorencová (November 13, 2001), AŽMP, Oral History Collection, Interview no. 952, p. 11. 120. Feder, Židovská tragédie, 35. 121. District Office in Kolín to the Municipal Office in Kolín (April 16, 1942), SOkA, f. OÚKolín pres. spisy, č. 551/42. 122. Helena Sellnerová, Tereza Přibylová, et al., Židé v Brtnici (Brtnice: Spolek pro starou Brtnici, 2006), 23. 123. Jan Slavík, Válečný deník historika (Prague: Academia, 2008), 155, 164–65. 124. Interview with Jarmila Špírková, conducted by Adam Hradílek (July 9, 2012), USHMM, RG-50.675*0008, 15–17; https://collections.ushmm.org /search /catalog /irn50853 (accessed July 30, 2019). 125. Kaufmannová, Léta 1938–1945, 76–77, 112. 126. Rothkirchen, The Jews of Bohemia and Moravia, 126. 127. Gruner, Die Judenverfolgung, 9–10. 128. Magda Veselská, “Židovské ústřední museum pro Moravsko-Slezsko v Mikulově,” RegioM: Sborník regionálního muzea v Mikulově 2 (2005), 80–87; AŽMP, Židovské ústřední museum, inv. č. 27—Kulturní a školské oddělení—korespondence a úřední záznamy ústních rozhovorů, k. 3. 129. See Magda Veselská, Archa paměti: Cesta pražského židovského muzea pohnutým 20. stoletím (Prague: Academia and the Jewish Museum in Prague, 2012). 130. Benjamin Frommer, “Privileged Victims: Intermarriage between Jews, Czechs and Germans in the Nazi Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia,” in Intermarriage from Central Europe to Central Asia: Mixed Families in the Age of Extremes, ed. Adrienne Edgar and Benjamin Frommer (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2020), 47–82. 131. Rothkirchen, The Jews of Bohemia and Moravia, 234. 132. “Židovská rada starších—zpráva za rok 1943,” AŽMP, f. Židovská náboženská obec za okupace 1939–1947, inv. č. 8., k. 1. 133. Bondy, “Elder of the Jews,” 330–31, 383. 134. Kárný, “Konečné řešení,” 88–89. 135. Rothkirchen, The Jews of Bohemia and Moravia, 156. 136. Anna Hájková, “What Kind of Narrative Is Legal Testimony? Terezín Witnesses before Czechoslovak, Austrian, and German Courts,” in Norman J. W. Goda, ed., Rethinking Holocaust Justice: Essays across Disciplines (New York: Berghahn Books, 2017), 73. 137. Anna Hájková, “Sexual Barter in Times of Genocide: Negotiating the Sexual Economy of the Theresienstadt Ghetto,” Signs 38:3 (spring 2013), 510; Miroslav Kárný, “Otázky nad 8. březnem 1944,” Terezínské studie a dokumenty 6 (1999), 12. 138. Kárný, “Konečné řešení,” 89–90.

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139. Edelstein was executed in Auschwitz on June 20, 1944. Rothkirchen, The Jews of Bohemia and Moravia, 261. 140. Ibid., 244. 141. Kárný, “Konečné řešení,” 85. 142. Ibid., 92; Hájková, “Sexual Barter,” 509. 143. Lisa Peschel, Performing Captivity, Performing Escape: Cabaret and Plays from the Terezín/ Theresienstadt Ghetto (New York: Seagull Books, 2014). 144. Rothkirchen, The Jews of Bohemia and Moravia, 266. 145. Ibid., 269–70; Andrea Braunová, “Knihovna v ghetto Terezín,” https://www.holocaust.cz /dejiny/ghetto-terezin/kultura/knihovna-v-ghettu-terezin/ (accessed May 14, 2020). 146. Rothkirchen, The Jews of Bohemia and Moravia, 257–58. 147. Zalman Gradowski, “The Czech Transport: A Chronicle of the Auschwitz Sonderkommando,” in The Literature of Destruction: Jewish Responses to Catastrophe, ed. David  G. Roskies (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1988), 562; see also Kateřina Čapková, “Das Zeugnis von Salmen Gradowski,” Theresienstädter Studien und Dokumente (1999), 116–22, and her translation of parts of Gradowski’s testimony related to the Family Camp from Yiddish into German: Salman Gradowski, “Im Herzen der Hölle,” in Theresienstädter Studien und Dokumente (1999), 12–41; Nicholas Chare and Dominic Williams, Matters of Testimony: Interpreting the Scrolls of Auschwitz (New York: Berghahn, 2017), 81. 148. Miroslav Kárný, “Terezínský rodinný tábor v ‘konečném řešení,’ ” in Terezínský rodinný tábor v Osvětimi-Birkenau, ed. Toman Brod, Miroslav Kárný, and Margita Kárná (Prague: Nadace Terezínská inciativa, 1994), 35–49.

Chapter 7 I would like to express my gratitude to Veronika Tucker, Chad Bryant, Benjamin Frommer, Malvína Hoffmann, and Hillel Kieval for their valuable comments on earlier drafts of this chapter. 1. Interview with Alice Lutwak, née Davidovič, recorded by Pavla Hermína Neuner, March 2016, Oral History Collection of the Jewish Museum in Prague, interview no. 298. 2. Interview with Malvina (Malke) Hoffmann, daughter of Moses Adler, recorded by Kateřina Čapková, October 2010; personal papers in possession of Malvina Hoffmann. 3. This day is therefore one of the impor tant Holocaust memorial days in the Czech Republic. 4. Interview with Pavel Fried, recorded by Martin Korčok, 2004, Centropa, http://www.centropa .org / biography/pavel-fried (accessed August 5, 2017). 5. “Svobodník v záloze Adler Mojžíš—žádost o přidělení obchodní místnosti. Dopis Vojenské invalidovny ‘Na Jenerálce’ Okresnímu finančnímu ředitelství v Ústí nad Labem,” April 26, 1946. Private Archive of Malvina Hoffmann. 6. “‘OSE’ organisirt hilf tetikeyt far Yidn in Tshechoslovakiye,” Der Vidersthtand/The Resistance 7.20 (January 7, 1946), 1. 7. Hugo Stransky, “The Religious Life in the Historic Lands,” in The Jews of Czechoslovakia: Historical Studies and Surveys, vol. 1 (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1968), 345. 8. AJJDC, Czechoslova kia, R 45/54-200, Research Department Report No. 32, based on the analysis of Israel J. Jacobson for December 1946–March 1947, published July 7, 1947. 9. AJJDC, Czechoslova kia, R 45/54-201, Report on Czechoslova kia for May and June 1946, dated June 30, 1946. 10. There were 53 Jewish communities registered in 1946 (34 communities in Bohemia and 19 in Moravia and Silesia): AJJDC, G 45-54, Czechoslova kia, Report for May and June 1946, compiled by Israel J. Jacobson, June 30, 1946. 11. See the lists of members of individual Jewish communities and their addresses: Archiv Židovské obce v Praze, file Postwar, balík 23, lists of members of Jewish communities on May 1, 1971. 12. Interview with Fried 2004.

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13. Lenka Matušíková, “Židovské obce v západočeském pohraničí po roce 1945 ve světle matričních záznamů,” in Židé v Čechách. 3. Sborník příspěvků ze semináře konaného 6. a 7. října 2010 v Tachově, ed. Vlastimila Hamáčková, Monika Hanková, and Markéta Lhotová (Prague: Židovské museum v Praze, 2011), 51–66. 14. Archiv židovské obce v Teplicích, correspondence with the Council of Jewish Communities in Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia, circular No. 3, October 1, 1945. 15. For more about Frischer, see Jan Láníček, Arnošt Frischer and the Jewish Politics of Early 20th- Century Europe (London: Bloomsbury, 2016). 16. For details, see Jaroslav Cuhra, “Staat und Kirchen in der Tschechoslowakei,” in Handbuch der Religions- und Kirchengeschichte der böhmischen Länder und Tschechiens im 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Martin Schulze Wessel and Martin Zückert (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2009), 555–616. 17. Jan Láníček, Czechs, Slovaks and the Jews, 1938–1948: Beyond Idealization and Condemnation (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2013), 47–53. See Eduard Beneš, “Czechoslovak Plans for Peace,” Foreign Affairs 23.1 (October  1944), 26–37, and “Postwar Czechoslova kia,” Foreign Affairs 24.3 (April 1946), 397–410. 18. Karel Jech and Karel Kaplan, eds., Dekrety Prezidenta republiky: Dokumenty (Brno: Doplněk, 2002). Doc. 21, 345. 19. Jan Kuklík et al., Jak odškodnit holocaust? Problematika vyvlastnění židovského majetku, jeho restituce a odškodnění (Prague: Karolinum, 2015). 20. As Benjamin Frommer has demonstrated, these committees played a crucial role in uprooting the democratic traditions of Czechoslovak society. Benjamin Frommer, National Cleansing: Retribution against Nazi Collaborators in Postwar Czechoslovakia (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 45–49. 21. United Nations Archives and Records Management Section, Fonds AG-018 United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) (1943–1946), Sub Fonds AG-018-016 Czechoslova kia Mission, sign. S-1326-0000-0040, Memorandum from Berthold Konirsch, March 20, 1946. 22. Kateřina Čapková, “Between Expulsion and Rescue: The Transports for German-speaking Jews of Czechoslova kia in 1946,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 62.1 (Spring 2018), 66–92. 23. Frommer, National Cleansing, 179–80. 24. Dieter Schallner, “Židovská problematika a antisemitismus ve spisech mimořádných lidových soudů ve Státním oblastním archivu v Zámrsku (kvantitativní analýza),” in Retribuce v ČSR a národní podoby antisemitismu: Židovská problematika a antisemitismus ve spisech mimořádných soudů a trestních komisí ONV v letech 1945–1948, ed. Mečislav Borák (Praha-Opava: ÚSD AV ČR / SÚ, 2002), 59; Peter Justin, “Židovská problematika ve spisech Mimořádného lidového soudu Písek,” in Poválečná justice a národní podoby antisemitismu: Postih provinění vůči Židům před soudy a komisemi ONV v českých zemích v letech 1945-1948 a v některých zemích střední Evropy, ed. Mečislav Borák (Prague/Opava: ÚSD AV ČR/ SÚ, 2002), 20; Lucie Jarkovská, “Židovská problematika a antisemitismus ve spisech Mimořádného lidového soudu Hradec Králové,” in Poválečná justice a národní podoby antisemitismu, ed. Borák, 34. 25. Mečislav Borák, “Mimořádný lidový soud Moravská Ostrava a projevy antisemitismu v jeho spisech,” in Poválečná justice a národní podoby antisemitismu, ed. Borák, 59. 26. Ruth Elias, From Theresienstadt and Auschwitz to Israel, trans. Margot Bettauer Dembo (New York: John Wiley & Sons/USHMM, 1998), Kindle edition, locs. 3256 and 3482. 27. See Bernard Wasserstein, Vanishing Diaspora: The Jews in Europe since 1945 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997). 28. Emblematic is the last sentence of the third volume, in which the Czechoslovak Jews who immigrated to the United States are described as being “in a new land where Jews were free to nurture the heritage of their fathers and to pass it on to their children.” Joseph C. Pick, “The Story of the Czech Scrolls,” in The Jews of Czechoslovakia: Historical Studies and Surveys, ed. Avigdor Dagan et al., (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1984), 591. 29. See especially Národní archiv v Praze, MPSP, box 19; Archiv bezpečnostních složek (ABS), Praha, fond 425-212-1; United Nations Archives and Records Management Section, Fonds

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AG-018, United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (1943–46), Sub Fonds AG-018016, Czechoslova kia Mission, S-1326-0000-0035, Minutes of a meeting on the Displaced Persons problem in Czechoslova kia, held at Mission headquarters on July 30, 1946, July 31, 1946. 30. Čapková, “Between Expulsion and Rescue,” 72. 31. Láníček also mentions the Brihah’s importance for improving the image of Czechoslovakia. Láníček, Czechs, Slovaks and the Jews, 176. 32. On 19 May the Czechoslovak government acknowledged de iure the establishment of the State of Israel per rollam. This was affirmed in the resolution of the 14th meeting of the Czechoslovak government in point 36 from May  25, 1948. See document 28  in Marie Bulínová et  al., Československo a Izrael v letech 1945–1956: Dokumenty (Prague: ÚSD AV ČR, 1993), 101–2. 33. For more see Láníček, Czechs, Slovaks and the Jews, 123–37. 34. Jiří Dufek and Vladimír Šlosar, “Československá materiálně technická pomoc Izraeli,” in Československo a Izrael 1947–1953: Studie, ed. Jiří Dufek, Karel Kaplan, and Vladimír Šlosar (Brno: Doplněk, 1993), 111–90. 35. For the differences in local contexts, see Jacob Ari Labendz, “Synagogues for Sale: JewishState Mutuality in the Communist Czech Lands, 1945–1970,” Jewish Culture and History 18.1 (2017), 54–78. 36. Heda Kovályová and Erazim V. Kohák, Na vlastní kůži: Dialog přes barikádu (Toronto: 68 Publishers, 1973), 76–77. 37. Karel Kaplan, Report on the Murder of the General Secretary (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1990). 38. Proces s vedením protistátního spikleneckého centra v čele s Rudolfem Slánským: soudní zápis (Prague: Ministerstvo spravedlnosti, 1953). 39. Kevin McDermott, “A ‘Polyphony of Voices’? Czech Popu lar Opinion and the Slánský Affair,” Slavic Review 67.4 (Winter 2008), 840–65. 40. Jan Gerber, Ein Prozess in Prag: Das Volk gegen Rudolf Slánský und Genossen (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2017). 41. More on Goldstücker’s activities before WWII, see chapter 5 in this volume. 42. Martin Šmok, “‘Every Jew Is a Zionist, and Every Zionist Is a Spy!’ The Story of Jewish Social Assistance Networks in Communist Czechoslovakia,” East European Jewish Affairs 44.1 (2014), 70–83. 43. ABS, sign. B 4, inv. č. 492, fond Krajská zpráva SNB Ústí nad Labem: Židovská náboženská obec Ústí nad Labem, agenturní zprávy 1957–1959, agenturní zpráva z 22. června 1957, p. 3. 44. Interview with Fried, 2004. 45. This might have been true for 1951 as well, but from 1950 all the birth records were kept only by the national committees, and the churches and the Jewish community lost the right to keep those records. This complicates the research of Jewish demography, since the records of the national committees do not mention religion. 46. Interview with Věra H., the daughter of Heřman Herškovič, recorded by Kateřina Čapková, May 2017. 47. Slovakia was divided into two districts, each with their own rabbi: Eliáš Katz, chief rabbi of Slovakia, resided in Bratislava, and Salomon Steiner was a district rabbi in Košice. 48. For more on their activities in the interwar period, see Chapter 5. 49. For more on Sicher’s teaching and research, see Rudolf Iltis, ed., Jewish Studies: Essays in Honour of the Very Reverend Dr. Gustav Sicher, Chief Rabbi of Prague (Prague: Council of Jewish Religious Communities, 1955). 50. Quoted from the permanent exhibition, “The Jewish Community in Prague since 1945,” at the Jerusalem Synagogue in Prague, curated by Martin Šmok. 51. Interview with Věra H., 2017. 52. Based on Jacob Labendz, “Synagogues for Sale,” 57. 53. This was most probably shalosh sudes (in Yiddish) or seudah shleshit (in Hebrew), the third Shabbat meal, held late afternoon (after Minchah) on Shabbat. 54. Interview with Malvina Hoffmann, 2010.

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55. Alena Heitlinger, In the Shadows of the Holocaust and Communism: Czech and Slovak Jews since 1945 (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2006). 56. Interview with Artur Radvanský, recorded by Martina Maršálková in June 2005, Centropa, http://www.centropa.org / biography/artur-radvansky (accessed November 3, 2017). 57. The JDC planned to open a branch in Czechoslova kia in the second half of the 1960s, but the mysterious death of Charles Jordan, executive vice president of the JDC, in August 1967, precluded this. New negotiations in 1968 were interrupted by the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslova kia. 58. Martin Šmok, Through the Labyrinth of Normalization: The Jewish Community as a Mirror for the Majority Society (Prague: Židovské museum v Praze, 2017), 41. 59. Interview with Harry Farkaš, recorded by Kateřina Čapková, October 2015. 60. “Jidiš,” Věstník židovské obce náboženské v Praze 1, (January 1, 1961), 8–9; “Jidiš,” Věstník židovské obce náboženské v Praze 2 (February 1, 1961), 7–9. 61. Jakub Markovič, Rozinky a mandle: Výbor z jidiš povídek (Prague: Odeon, 1968). 62. Magda Veselská, Archa paměti: Cesta pražského židovského muzea pohnutým 20. stoletím. (Prague: Židovské muzeum, 2012), 179. 63. For more on this, see Peter Hallama, Nationale Helden und jüdische Opfer: Tschechische Repräsentationen des Holocaust (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015). 64. Magda Veselská, “The Story of Hana Volavková (1904–1985),” Judaica Bohemiae 45 (2010), no. 2, 30. 65. Hallama, Nationale Helden und jüdische Opfer, 63–142. 66. For more on this, see Magda Veselská, “The Selling Off of Items from the Collections of the Jewish Museum in Prague after the Second World War, with Par ticu lar Focus on the Sale of Torah Scrolls in 1963–1964,” Judaica Bohemiae 42 (2006), 179–232. 67. Veronika Tuckerová, “Reading Kafka, Writing Vita: The Trials of Eduard Goldstücker,” New German Critique 124 (February 2015), 129. 68. Jiří Stromšík, “ ‘Kafkarny’—kafkaeske Situationen im totalitären Alltag,” in Nach erneuter Lektüre: Franz Kafkas Der Process, ed. H. D. Zimmermann (Würzburg: Konighausen und Neumann, 1992), 269–84. 69. Stuart Liebman and Leonard Quart, “Czech Films of the Holocaust,” Cinéaste 22.1 (1996), 49–51. 70. Ibid. 71. For the diverse reactions to this film in Czechoslova kia from the 1960s to the present, see Miloslav Szabó, “Ein ‘antislowakischer’ Oscar-Film? Zur Darstellung des Holocaust im tschechoslowakischen Film Obchod na korze,” in S:I.M.O.N.—Shoah: Intervention. Methods. Documentation 2 (2015), no. 1, 102–9. 72. Tomáš Glanc, “ ‘Spaziergang ins Blaue’: Die Kultur der tschechischen 1960er Jahre,” Osteuropa 7 (July 2008), 109–18. 73. Heitlinger, In the Shadows, esp. 205–8. 74. Interview with Tomáš Kraus, son of František R. Kraus, recorded by Kateřina Čapková, September 2018. 75. Interview with Malvina Hoffmann, 2010. In later years, Gott would publicly make antisemitic remarks and suggest there is a world Jewish conspiracy. 76. The text of Werich’s speech is available online: http://www.moderni-dejiny.cz/clanek /jan -werich-o-antisemitismu-na-vystave-millenium-judaicum-bohemicum/ (accessed August 15, 2017). 77. Ewa Węgrzyn, Wyjeżdżamy!, Wyjeżdżamy?! Alija gomułkowska 1956–1960 (Kraków: Austeria, 2016). 78. 45. schůze předsednictva ÚV KSČ ze dne 19. září 1967, Bod 17: Disciplinární řízení se spisovateli Pavlem Kohoutem, Ivanem Klímou, Antonínem J. Liehmem, Ludvíkem Vaculíkem. http:// www.csds.cz/cs/g6/4331-DS.html (accessed August 8, 2017). 79. Galia Golan, The Czechoslovak Reform Movement: Communism in Crisis, 1962–1968 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), 246.

352

Notes to Pages 269–282

80. Wolf Oschlies, Mißtrauen gegen “Genossen jüdischer Herkunft”: Antisemitismus und “Antizionismus” in der Tschechoslowakei (Cologne: Bundesinstitut für Ostwissenschaftliche und Internationale Studien, 1971). 81. Ondřej Koutek, “Útvar StB pro boj proti sionismu. Potírání sionismu jako nástroje mezinárodního imperialismu a antikomunismu,” Paměť a dějiny 1 (2017), 65–76. 82. AJJDC, New York Collection, 1975/89, reel 92, folder AR 75/89-1196, Czechoslova kia 1982 Program Report, May 13, 1982. 83. Audio recordings of his singing are on a CD prepared by Veronika Seidlová to accompany her booklet about Blum: Zapomenutý hlas pražské Jeruzalémské synagogy: Kantor Ladislav Moše Blum, osobní nahrávky z let 1978—1983 (Prague: Židovské Muzeum v Praze, in cooperation with Phonogrammarchiv of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, 2008). 84. The next sections of this chapter are based on documents from the AJJDC Archive, collections on Czechoslova kia nos. 1192–1197 for the years 1976–90. I thank Michael Mitsel of the AJJDC Archive in New York for making those documents accessible to me. 85. Tomáš Pěkný, “Vzpomínka na dr. Desidera Galského, význačného činitele české židovské komunity,” March  27, 2011, http://www.rozhlas.cz/nabozenstvi/salom/_ zprava /vzpominka-na-dr -desidera-galskeho-vyznacneho-cinitele-ceske-zidovske-komunity--868738 (accessed February  2, 2018). 86. Interview with Artur Radvanský, 2005. 87. “Dopis vládě ČSSR, Sekretariátu pro věci církevni v předsednictvu vlády ČSSR, Ministerstvu kultury ČSR, Radě židovských náboženských obcí, Židovské náboženské obci v Praze, Statnímu ústavu památkové péče a ochrany přirody a Českému svazu protifašistických bojovníků o kritickém stavu a devastaci židovských kulturních památek a o zamlčování osudu židovského obyvatelstva v době holocaustu,” in Charta 77: Dokumenty 1977–1989, ed. Blanka Císařovská and Vilém Prečan (Prague: Ústav pro soudobé dějiny AV ČR, 2007), 1103–6. 88. Císařovská and Prečan, Charta 77, 1106–9. 89. Jiří Fiedler, Jewish Sights of Bohemia and Moravia: Guide Book, intro Arno Pařík (Prague: Sefer, 1991). See also his much more detailed publications about Jewish monuments in different localities and regions. The on-going project of documentation of the history of the Jewish communities in the Bohemian Lands was interrupted by the murder of Jiří Fiedler and his wife in 2014. For more about the project, see https://www.jewishmuseum.cz/en /collection-research /science-and -research/documentation-of-jewish-communities/ (accessed November 15, 2017). 90. For more on Jiří Fiedler, see Archivist on a Bicycle: Jiří Fiedler, ed. Helen Epstein and Wilma Iggers (Lexington, MA: Plunkett Lake Press, 2015). 91. Among the many works on this topic, see Jaroslav Bránský, Židé v Boskovicích (Boskovice: Klub přátel Boskovic, 1999). 92. Tony Judt, Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945 (New York: Penguin Press, 2005), 803. 93. Ibid., 804. 94. For more on this, see http://10hvezd.cz/en/ (accessed June 13, 2018). 95. See Chapter 1 of this book. 96. Email of Tereza Kotláriková from the Federation of the Jewish Communities in the Czech Republic to the author, June 5, 2018. 97. The census in 2011 was also boycotted by a large number of people, despite the fact that one could be punished with a monetary fine for doing so. For more on the results of the census, see https:// www.czso.cz/csu/czso/scitani-lidu-domu-a-bytu-2011 (accessed April 4, 2018).

Appendix 1. Chapters 4 and 5 deal with this theme in more detail. 2. Ines Koeltzsch, “Migration als Herausforderung. Die Politischen Judengemeinden in Mähren un ihr ‘Niedergang’ um 1900,” Judaica Bohemiae, 53.1 (2018), 9–38.

Notes to Pages 282–284

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3. Ines Koeltzsch’s study deals with the period before World War I. No similar research exists for the year 1921. 4. It should be mentioned, however, that not all Polish or Hungarian Jewish students opted for Jewish nationality during the census. Many chose Polish, Hungarian, or other nationalities. 5. More can be found on this theme in Chapter 5. 6. More can be found on this theme in Chapter 7. 7. This happened in Třebíč, for example, where nine local Jews survived, including the family of Pavel Fried, as we know from the beginning of Chapter 7. Some members of his family were included in the Brno community, where they went for High Holidays.

S el e c te d Bibli o g r aphy

The bibliography is far from a complete list of literature about the history of Jews in the Bohemian Lands. Additional reading is suggested in the notes to each chapter.

Testimonies and Memoirs Bader, Marie. Life and Love in Nazi Prague: Letters from an Occupied City, trans. Kate Ottevanger; ed. Kate Ottevanger and Jan Láníček (London: Bloomsbury, 2019). Beer, Fritz. Hast du auf Deutsche geschossen, Grandpa? Fragmente einer Lebensgeschichte (Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag, 1992). Elias, Ruth. From Theresienstadt and Auschwitz to Israel, trans. Margot Bettauer Dembo (New York: John Wiley & Sons/ USHMM, 1998). Faltysová, Hana, and Lenka Šindelářová, Hrst vzpomínek . . . židovské rodiny z Holicka (Prague: Devět bran, 2009). Feder, Richard. Židovská tragédie: Dějství poslední (Kolín: Literární a umělecké sbírky města Kolína, 1947). Ginz, Petr. The Diary of Petr Ginz, ed. by Chava Pressburger, trans. by Elana Lappin. (New York: Grove Press, 2008). Iggers, Wilma, and Georg Iggers. Two Lives in Uncertain Times: Facing the Challenges of the 20th Century as Scholars and Citizens (New York: Berghahn, 2006). Kaufmannová, Heda. Léta 1938–1945: Válečné vzpomínky (Prague: Ústav pro soudobé dějiny AV ČR, 1999). Klinger, Ruth. Zeugin einer Zeit (Self-published, n.p., 2d ed., 1979). Mannheimer, Max. Spätes Tagebuch: Theresienstadt—Auschwitz—Warschau—Dachau (Munich: Pendo, 2009). Margolius Kovály, Heda. Under a Cruel Star: A Life in Prague 1941‒1968 (Cambridge: Plunkett Lake Press, 1986). Weber, Ilse. Wann wohl das Leid ein Ende hat: Briefe und Gedichte aus Theresienstadt, ed. Ulrike Migdal (Munich: Hanser, 2008). Wechsberg, Joseph. The Vienna I Knew: Memories of a European Childhood (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1979). Weiss, Isaac Hirsch. Zikhronotai (Warsaw: Shuldberg, 1895). Wels, Šimon. U Bernátů (Prague: Torst, 1993). Weltsch Felix, ed. Prag vi-Yerushalayim. Sefer le-zekher Leo Herman (Jerusalem: Keren ha-Yesod, 1954).

Secondary Literature Adler, H.  G. Theresienstadt 1941–1945: Das Antlitz einer Zwangsgemeinschaft. 2 vols. (Tubingen: J.  C.  B. Mohr, 1955). Eng. ed., Theresienstadt 1941–1945: The Face of a Coerced Community, trans. Belinda Cooper (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017).

356

Selected Bibliography

Arava-Novotna, Lena. “Quelques images de la Bohême au XVIIIe siècle: Les Juifs en milieu rural.” Theatrum historiae 2 (2007), 217–74. Bergl, Josef. “Das Exil der Prager Judenschaft von 1745–1748.” Jahrbuch der Gesellschaft für Geschichte der Juden in der Čechoslovakischen Republik 2 (1930), 263–331. Bondy, Gottlieb, and Franz Dworský. Zur Geschichte der Juden in Böhmen, Mähren und Schlesien von 906 bis 1620 (Prague: G. Bondy, 1906). Bondy, Ruth. “Elder of the Jews”: Jacob Edelstein of Theresienstadt (New York: Grove Press, 1989). Borák, Mečislav. Transport do tmy. První deportace evropských Židů (Ostrava: Moravskoslezský den, 1994). ———, ed. Retribuce v ČSR a národní podoby antisemitismu. Židovská problematika a antisemitismus ve spisech mimořádných soudů a trestních komisí ONV v letech 1945–1948 (Prague-Opava: ÚSD/SZM, 2002). Brade, Laura E., and Rose Holmes. “Troublesome Sainthood: Nicholas Winton and the Contested History of Child Rescue in Prague, 1938–1940.” History and Memory 29.1 (2017), 3–40. Brilling, Bernhard. “Die Prager Jüdische Gemeinde als Fürsprecherin und Vertreterin des deutschen Judentums im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert.” Theokratia 3 (1973–75), 185–98. Bulínová, Marie et al. Československo a Izrael v letech 1945–1956. Dokumenty (Prague: ÚSD AV ČR, 1993). Buňatová, Marie. Die Prager Juden in der Zeit vor der Schlacht am weiβen Berg: Handel und Wirtschaftsgebaren der Prager Juden im Spiegel des Liber Albus Judeorum 1577–1601 (Kiel: Solivagus-Verlag, 2011). Čapková, Kateřina. “Anti-Jewish Discourses in the Czech National Movement: Havlíček, Neruda and Kapper.” Judaica Bohemiae 46.2 (2011), 77–94. ———. “Between Expulsion and Rescue: The Transports for German-speaking Jews of Czechoslova kia in 1946.” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 62.1 (Spring 2018), 66–92. ———. “Beyond the Assimilationist Narrative: Historiography on the Jews of the Bohemian Lands and Poland after the Second World War.” Studia Judaica 19.1 (2016), 129–55. ———. Czechs, Germans, Jews? National Identity and the Jews of Bohemia, trans. by Marzia and Derek Paton (New York: Berghahn, 2012). ———. “Jewish Elites in the 19th and 20th Centuries: The B’nai B’rith Order in Central Europe.” Judaica Bohemiae 36 (2000), 119–42. ———. “Piłsudski or Masaryk? Revisionist Zionism in Czechoslova kia 1925–1940.” Judaica Bohemiae 35 (1999), 210–39. Čapková, Kateřina, and Michal Frankl. Unsichere Zuflucht: Die Tschechoslowakei und ihre Flüchtlinge aus NS-Deutschland und Österreich 1933–1938 (Vienna: Böhlau, 2012). Carlebach, Elisheva. The Death of Simon Abeles: Jewish- Christian Tension in Seventeenth- Century Prague. Third Annual Herbert Berman Memorial Lecture (New York: Center for Jewish Studies, Queens College, CUNY, 2001). Cermanová, Iveta. “Samuel Landau versus Karl Fischer und Eleasar Fleckeles. Der Streit um Priorität und Rabbinertitulaturen in der Prager jüdischen Gemeinde nach dem Tod Ezechiel Landaus.“ Judaica Bohemiae 45.2 (2010), 73–103. Cermanová, Iveta, and Jindřich Marek. Na rozhraní křesťanského a židovského světa. Příběh hebrejského cenzora a klementinského knihovníka Karla Fischera (1757–1844) (Prague: Národní knihovna, 2007). Černý, Bohumil. Vražda v Polné (Prague: Vydavatelství časopisů MNO, 1968). Cohen, Gary  B. “Jews in German Society: Prague, 1860–1914.” Central European History 10.1 (1977), 28–54. ———. The Politics of Ethnic Survival: Germans in Prague, 1861–1914. 2d ed. (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2006). Cohen, Richard I. “Nostalgia and ‘Return to the Ghetto’: A Cultural Phenomenon in Western and Central Europe.” In Assimilation and Community in European Jewry, 1815–1900: The Jews in

Selected Bibliography

357

Nineteenth- Century Europe, ed. Jonathan Frankel and Steven J. Zipperstein (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 130–55. Davis, Joseph M. Yom-Tov Lipmann Heller: Portrait of a Seventeenth- Century Rabbi (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2004). Deák, István. Beyond Nationalism: A Social and Political History of the Habsburg Officer Corps, 1848–1918 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990). Deme, Katalin. Jüdische Museen in Ostmitteleuropa. Kontinuitäten—Brüche—Neuanfänge: Prag, Budapest, Bratislava (1993–2012) (Munich: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2016). Donath, Oskar. Židé a židovství v české literatuře 19. a 20. století. Vol. 2 (Brno: Self-published, 1930). Dvořák, Jan. Židé v českém Slezsku v době okupace 1938–1945. (Opava: Slezská univerzita v Opavě, 2015). Dufek, Jiří, Karel Kaplan, and Vladimír Šlosar, eds. Československo a Izrael 1947–1953: Studie (Brno: Doplněk, 1993). Feinberg, Melissa. Elusive Equality: Gender, Citizenship, and the Limits of Democracy in Czechoslovakia, 1918–1950 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011). Fiedler, Jiří. Jewish Sights of Bohemia and Moravia: Guide Book. Intro. Arno Pařík (Prague: Sefer, 1991). Frankl, Michal. “From Boycott to Riot: Moravian Anti-Jewish Violence of 1899 and Its Background.” In Sites of European Antisemitism in the Age of Mass Politics, 1880–1918, ed. Robert Nemes and Daniel Unowsky (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2014), 94–114. ———. “Prag ist nunmehr antisemitisch”: Tschechischer Antisemitismus am Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts (Berlin: Metropol, 2011). Frankl, Michal, and Miloslav Szabó. Budování státu bez antisemitismu? Násilí, diskurz loajality a vznik Československa (Prague: Nakladatelství Lidové noviny, 2015). Frankl, Michal, and Jindřich Toman, eds. Jan Neruda a Židé: Texty a kontexty (Prague: Akropolis, 2012). Friedländer, Mardochai Hirsch. Materialien zur Geschichte der Juden in Böhmen (Brünn: Epstein, 1888). Frommer, Benjamin. “Honorary Czechs and Germans: Petitions for Aryan Status in the Nazi Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia,” in  Petitions Resisting Persecution: Negotiating SelfDetermination and Survival of European Jews, ed. Wolf Gruner and Thomas Pegelow Kaplan (New York: Berghahn Books, 2020), 72–91. ———. National Cleansing: Retribution against Nazi Collaborators in Postwar Czechoslovakia (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005). ———. “Privileged Victims: Intermarriage between Jews, Czechs and Germans in the Nazi Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia,” in Intermarriage from Central Europe to Central Asia: Mixed Families in the Age of Extremes, ed. and introduced by Adrienne Edgar and Benjamin Frommer (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2020), 47–82. Gerber, Jan. Ein Prozess in Prag: Das Volk gegen Rudolf Slánský und Genossen (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2017). Giustino, Cathleen  M. Tearing Down Prague’s Jewish Town: Ghetto Clearance and the Legacy of Middle- Class Ethnic Politics around 1900 (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 2003). Gold, Hugo. Die Juden und die Judengemeinden Böhmens in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart: Ein Sammelwerk (Brünn: Jüdischer Buch- und Kunstverlag, 1934). ———, ed. Die Juden und Judengemeinden Mährens in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart (Brünn: Jüdischer Buch- und Kunstverlag, 1929). Greenblatt, Rachel L. To Tell Their Children: Jewish Communal Memory in Early Modern Prague (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014). Gruner, Wolf. The Holocaust in Bohemia and Moravia: Czech Initiatives, German Policies, Jewish Responses, trans. Alex Skinner (New York: Berghahn, 2019).

358

Selected Bibliography

Hájková, Anna. The Last Ghetto: An Everyday History of Theresienstadt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020). ———. “Sexual Barter in Times of Genocide: Negotiating the Sexual Economy of the Theresienstadt Ghetto.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 38.3 (spring 2013), 503–33. Hallama, Peter. Nationale Helden und jüdische Opfer: Tschechische Repräsentationen des Holocaust (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015). Hanková, Monika. “Die jüdische Religionsgemeinschaft nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg.” In Handbuch der Religions- und Kirchengeschichte der böhmischen Länder und Tschechiens im 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Martin Schulze Wessel and Martin Zückert (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2009), 741–55. Hecht, Louise. Ein jüdischer Aufklärer in Böhmen: Der Pädagoge und Reformer Peter Beer (1758– 1838) (Cologne: Böhlau, 2008). Heitlinger, Alena. In the Shadows of the Holocaust and Communism: Czech and Slovak Jews since 1945 (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2006). Heřman, Jan. “Die Wirtschaftliche Betätigung und die Berufe der Prager Juden vor ihrer Ausweisung im Jahre 1541.” Judaica Bohemiae 4 (1968), 20–63. ———. Jüdische Friedhöfe in Böhmen und Mähren (Prague: Ústřední církevní nakl., 1980). Hoffmann-Holter, Beatrix. “Abreisendmachung”: Jüdische Kriegsflüchtlinge in Wien 1914 bis 1923 (Vienna: Böhlau, 1995). Holý, Jiří, ed. Cizí i blízcí. Židé, literatura, kultura v českých zemích ve 20. století (Prague: Akropolis, 2016). Holz, Klaus. Nationaler Antisemitismus: Wissenssoziologie einer Weltanschauung (Hamburg: Hamburger Ed., 2001). Hráský, Josef. “Ein Beitrag zur Kenntnis der Judensiedlungen in Böhmen in den Jahren 1650 und 1674.” Jahrbuch der Gesellschaft für Geschichte der Juden in der Čechoslovakischen Republik 9 (1938), 243–70. Hyman, Paula E. “Gender and the Shaping of Modern Jewish Identities.” Jewish Social Studies, n.s. 8.2–3 (2002), 153–61. Iggers, Wilma, ed. The Jews of Bohemia and Moravia: A Historical Reader (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1992). Jakobovits, Tobias. “Das Prager und Böhmische Landesrabbinat Ende des siebzehnten und Anfang des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts.” Jahrbuch der Gesellschaft für Geschichte der Juden in der Čechoslovakischen Republik 5 (1933), 79–136. The Jews of Czechoslovakia. Historical Studies and Surveys, vols. 1–3 (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America/Society for the History of Czechoslovak Jews, 1968, 1971, 1984). Judson, Pieter M. Exclusive Revolutionaries: Liberal Politics, Social Experience, and National Identity in the Austrian Empire, 1848–1914 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996). ———. Guardians of the Nation: Activists on the Language Frontiers of Imperial Austria (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006). ———. The Habsburg Empire: A New History (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2016). Judt, Tony. Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945 (New York: Penguin Press, 2005). Kaplan, Karel. Report on the Murder of the General Secretary (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1990). Kaplan, Marion A. The Making of the Jewish Middle Class: Women, Family, and Identity in Imperial Germany (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991). Kárný, Miroslav. “Konečné řešení”: Genocida českých židů v německé protektorátní politice (Prague: Academia, 1991). Kasperová, Dana. Výchova a vzdělávání židovských dětí v protektorátu a v ghettu Terezín (Prague: Filozofická fakulta Univerzity Karlovy, 2010). Kempter, Klaus. Die Jellineks 1820–1955: Eine familienbiographische Studie zum deutschjüdischen Bildungsbürgertum (Düsseldorf: Droste, 1998).

Selected Bibliography

359

Kestenberg-Gladstein, Ruth. “Differences of Estates within Pre-Emancipation Jewry. A Study in the Social Structure of Bohemian Provincial Jewry, Part  I.” Journal of Jewish Studies 5.4 (1954), 156–66. ———. “Differences of Estates within Pre-Emancipation Jewry. A Study in the Social Structure of Bohemian Provincial Jewry, Part II.” Journal of Jewish Studies 6.1 (1955), 35–49. ———. Neuere Geschichte der Juden in den böhmischen Ländern. Erster Teil: Das Zeitalter der Aufklärung 1780–1830 (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1969). Kieval, Hillel J. Languages of Community: The Jewish Experience in the Czech Lands (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000). ———. The Making of Czech Jewry: National Conflict and Jewish Society in Bohemia, 1870–1918 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988). ———. “Nationalism and Antisemitism: The Czech-Jewish Response.” In Living with Antisemitism: Modern Jewish Responses, ed. Jehuda Reinharz (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1987), 210–33. ———. “Negotiating Czechoslovakia: The Challenges of Jewish Citizenship in a Multiethnic NationState.” In Insiders and Outsiders: Dilemmas of East European Jewry, ed. Richard I. Cohen, Jonathan Frankel, and Stefani Hoffman (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2010), 103–19. ———“The Rules of the Game: Forensic Medicine and the Language of Science in the Structuring of Modern Ritual Murder Trials.” Jewish History 26.3–4 (2013), 287–307. ———. “The Unforeseen Consequences of Cultural Resistance: Haskalah and State-Mandated Reform in the Bohemian Lands.” Jewish Culture and History 13.2–3 (2012), 108–23. King, Jeremy. Budweisers into Czechs and Germans: A Local History of Bohemian Politics, 1848– 1948 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002). Koeltzsch, Ines. “Die Anwesenheit des Abwesenden: Nostalgie und das kulturelle Gedächtnis böhmisch-mährischer Landjuden vor und nach der Shoah.” S:I.M.O.N. 3. 2 (2016), 37–57. ———. Geteilte Kulturen: Eine Geschichte der tschechisch-jüdisch-deutschen Beziehungen in Prag 1918–1938 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2012). ———. “Migration als Herausforderung. Die politischen Judengemeinden in Mähren un ihr ‘Niedergang‘ um 1900.” Judaica Bohemiae 53.1 (2018), 9–38. Kopetz, Heinrich. Versuch einer systematischen Darstellung der in Böhmen bezüglich der Juden bestehenden Gesetze und Verordnungen (Prague: G. Hesse Söhne, 1846). Kopička, Petr, and Hana Legnerová. “Jews, Burghers and Lords. Social and Economic Relations in the Town of Roudnice nad Labem (Raudnitz), 1592–1619.” Judaica Bohemiae 41 (2005), 5–43. Kovtun, Jiří. Tajuplná vražda: Případ Leopolda Hilsnera (Prague: Sefer, 1994). Kubátová, Hana and Jan Láníček, The Jew in the Czech and Slovak Imagination, 1938–89: Antisemitism, the Holocaust and Zionism (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2018). Kubů, Eduard, and Drahomír Jančík. “Arizace” a arizátoři: Drobný a střední židovský majetek v úvěrech Kreditanstalt der Deutschen (1939–45) (Prague: Karolinum, 2005). Kučera, Rudolf. Rationed Life: Science, Everyday Life and Working- Class Politics in the Bohemian Lands, 1914–1918 (New York: Berghahn, 2016). Kybalová, Ludmila, Zlata Černá, and Alexandr Putík. Textiles from Bohemian and Moravian Synagogues: From the Collections of the Jewish Museum in Prague (Prague: Židovské muzeum v Praze, 2003). Labendz, Jacob Ari. “Synagogues for Sale: Jewish-State Mutuality in the Communist Czech Lands, 1945–1970.” Jewish Culture and History 18.1 (2017), 54–78. Lagus, Karel, and Josef Polák. Město za mřížemi (Prague: Naše vojsko, 1964). Láníček, Jan. Arnošt Frischer and the Jewish Politics of Early 20th-Century Europe (London: Bloomsbury, 2016). ———. Czechs, Slovaks and the Jews, 1938–1948: Beyond Idealization and Condemnation (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2013). Lawson, David, Libuše Salomonovičová, and Hana Šústková. Ostrava and Its Jews: “Now No- One Sings You Lullabies” (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 2018).

360

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Leininger, Věra. Auszug aus dem Ghetto: Rechtstellung und Emanzipationsbemühungen der Juden in Prag in der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts. (Singapore: Kuda Api Press, 2006). Lichtenstein, Tatjana. Zionists in Interwar Czechoslovakia: Minority Nationalism and the Politics of Belonging (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2016). Machala, Jan. “ ‘Unbearable Jewish Houses of Prayer’: The Nazi Destruction of Synagogues Based on Examples from Central Moravia.” Judaica Bohemiae 49.1 (2013) 59–88. Mendelsohn, Ezra. The Jews of East Central Europe Between the World Wars (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983). Mentzel, Walter. “Kriegserfahrungen von Flüchtlingen aus dem Nordosten der Monarchie während des Ersten Weltkrieges.” In Jenseits des Schützengrabens. Der Erste Weltkrieg im Osten: Erfahrung—Wahrnehmung—Kontext, ed. Bernhard Bachinger and Wolfram Dornik (Innsbruck: StudienVerlag, 2013), 359–90. Meyer, Michael A. Response to Modernity: A History of the Reform Movement in Judaism (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1995). Miller, Michael Laurence. “A ‘City and Mother in Israel’ and Its Place of Memory: The Jewish Cemetery in Nikolsburg (Mikulov), Moravia.” Jewish Studies at the Central European University 8 (2011–16), 185–95. ———. Rabbis and Revolution: The Jews of Moravia in the Age of Emancipation (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011). ———. “Reluctant Kingmakers: Moravian Jewish Politics in Late Imperial Austria.” CEU Jewish Studies Yearbook 3 (2002–3), 111–23. Milotová, Jaroslava. “Die Zentralstelle für jüdische Auswanderung in Prag: Genesis und Tätigkeit bis zum Anfang des Jahres 1940.” Theresienstädter Studien und Dokumente (1997), 7–30. Neuda, Fanny. Stunden der Andacht: Ein Gebet- und Erbauungsbuch für Israels Frauen und Jungfrauen, zur öffentlichen und häuslichen Andacht, so wie für alle Verhältnisse des weiblichen Lebens (Prague: Wolf Pascheles, 1854). Niedhammer, Martina. “Kooperation statt Migration? Die Einrichtung der ‘Zentralstelle für jüdische Wanderarmen-Fürsorge’ in Wien 1911–1914.” In Kooperatives Imperium: Politische Zusammenarbeit in der späten Habsburgermonarchie, ed. Jana Osterkamp (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2018), 249–64. ———. Nur eine “Geld-Emancipation”? Loyalitäten und Lebenswelten des Prager jüdischen Groβbürgertums 1800–1867 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013). Nosek, Bedřich. “Soziale Differenzierungen und Streitigkeiten in jüdischen Kultusgemeinden der Böhmischen Länder im 17. Jahrhundert und Entstehung der ‘Landesjudenschaft.’ ” Judaica Bohemiae 12 (1976), 59–92. Orzoff, Andrea. Battle for the Castle: The Myth of Czechoslovakia in Europe, 1914–1948 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). Osterloh, Jörg. Nationalsozialistische Judenverfolgung im Reichsgau Sudetenland 1938–1945 (Munich: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 2006). Pařík, Arno. Symbols of Emancipation: Nineteenth- Century Synagogues in the Czech Lands (Prague: Židovské muzeum v Praze, 2013). Pěkný, Tomáš. Historie Židů v Čechách a na Moravě (Prague: Sefer, 1993; 2d ed., 2001). Peschel, Lisa. Performing Captivity, Performing Escape: Cabaret and Plays from the Terezín/Theresienstadt Ghetto (New York: Seagull Books, 2014). Petrův, Helena. Zákonné bezpráví: Židé v Protektorátu Čechy a Morava (Prague: Auditorium, 2011). Podlešák, Jan. Naše dny se naplnily: z historie Židů v jižních Čechách (Ćeské Budějovice: Klub přátel Izraele, 2002). Potthast, Jan Björn. Das jüdische Zentralmuseum der SS in Prag: Gegnerforschung und Völkermord im Nationalsozialismus. (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2002). Prokeš, Jaroslav, and Anton Blaschka. “Der Antisemitismus der Behörden und das Prager Ghetto in nachweißenbergischer Zeit.” Jahrbuch der Gesellschaft für Geschichte der Juden in der Čechoslovakischen Republik 1 (1929), 111–48.

Selected Bibliography

361

Putík, Alexandr. “The Hebrew Inscription on the Crucifix at Charles Bridge in Prague: The Case of Elias Backoffen and Berl Tabor in the Appellation Court.” Judaica Bohemiae 32 (1997), 25–103. ———. “The Prague Jewish Community in the Late 17th and Early 18th Centuries.” Judaica Bohemiae 35 (1999), 4–140. ———. “Prague Jews and Judah Hasid: A Study on the Social, Political and Religious History of the Late Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries,” parts 1–3. Judaica Bohemiae 1: 38 (2002), 72–105; 2: 39 (2003), 53–92; 3: 46.1 (2011), 33–72. Putík, Alexandr, and Olga Sixtová, eds. Path of Life: Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel, ca. 1525–1609 (Prague: Academia, 2009). Reiner, Elchanan, ed. Maharal: Akdamot: pirke hayim, mishnah, hashpaʻah (Jerusalem: Merkaz Zalman Shazar le-heker toledot ha-ʻam ha-Yehudi, 2015). Roubík, František. “Drei Beiträge zur Entwicklung der Judenemanzipation in Böhmen.” Jahrbuch der Gesellschaft für Geschichte der Juden in der Čechoslovakischen Republik 5 (1933), 313–48. ———. “Von den Anfängen des Vereines für Verbesserung des israelitischen Kultus in Böhmen.” Jahrbuch der Gesellschaft für Geschichte der Juden in der Čechoslovakischen Republik 9 (1938), 411–47. ———. “Zur Geschichte der Juden in Böhmen in der ersten Hälfte des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts.” Jahrbuch der Gesellschaft für Geschichte der Juden in der Čechoslovakischen Republik 6 (1934), 285–322. Rozenblit, Marsha L. Reconstructing a National Identity: The Jews of Habsburg Austria during World War I (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). Rund, Michael. Po stopách Rudolfa Welse: Život a dílo žáka a spolupracovníka Adolfa Loose (Sokolov: Fornica, 2006). Sayer, Derek. Prague, Capital of the Twentieth Century: A Surrealist History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013). Schmidl, Erwin A. Habsburgs jüdische Soldaten 1788–1918 (Vienna: Böhlau, 2014). Seibt, Ferdinand, ed. Die Juden in den böhmischen Ländern: Vorträge der Tagung des Collegium Carolinum in Bad Wiessee vom 27. bis 29. November 1981 (Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 1983). Shumsky, Dimitry. Zweisprachigkeit und binationale Idee: Der Prager Zionismus 1900–1930 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013). Silber, Michael K. “From Tolerated Aliens to Citizen-Soldiers: Jewish Military Ser vice in the Era of Joseph II.” In Constructing Nationalities in East Central Europe, ed. Pieter M. Judson and Marsha L. Rozenblit (New York: Berghahn, 2005), 19–36. ———. “Josephinian Reforms.” YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe (2010), http://www .yivoencyclopedia.org /article.aspx /Josephinian _ Reforms (accessed 15 April 2020). Silverman, Lisa. Becoming Austrians: Jews and Culture between the World Wars (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). Sixtová, Olga. “Findings from Genizot in Bohemia and Moravia.” Judaica Bohemiae 34 (1998), 126– 34. ———, ed. Hebrew Printing in Bohemia and Moravia (Prague: Židovské muzeum v Praze, 2012). Sládek, Pavel. “Early Modern Ethnographies of Jews: An Unpublished Book on Jewish Mores by the Czech Catholic Priest Karel Jugl.” Frankfurter Judaistische Beiträge 40 (2015), 167–98. ———. “A Sixteenth-Century Rabbi as a Published Author: The Early Editions of Rabbi Mordecai Jaffe’s Levushim.” In Connecting Histories: Jews and Their Others in the Early Modern Period, ed. David Ruderman and Francesca Bregoli (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019), 49–66. Šmok, Martin. Through the Labyrinth of Normalization: The Jewish Community as a Mirror for the Majority Society (Prague: Židovské muzeum v Praze, 2017). Spector, Scott. Prague Territories: National Conflict and Cultural Innovation in Franz Kafka’s Fin de Siècle (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000). Stein, Abraham. Die Geschichte der Juden in Böhmen: Nach amtlichen gedruckten und ungedruckten Quellen bearbeitet (Brünn: Jüdischer Buch- und Kunstverlag, 1904).

362

Selected Bibliography

Steinherz, Samuel. Die Juden in Prag: Bilder aus ihrer tausendjährigen Geschichte: Festgabe der Loge Praga des Ordens B’nai B’rith zum Gedenktage ihres 25jährigen Bestandes (Prague: Die Bücherstube, 1927). Stölzl, Christoph. “Zur Geschichte der böhmischen Juden in der Epoche des modernen Nationalismus.” Bohemia 14 (1973), 149–221, and Bohemia 15 (1974), 129–57. Teplitsky, Joshua. Prince of the Press: How One Collector Built History’s Most Enduring and Remarkable Jewish Library (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2019). Teufel, Helmut. Zur politischen und sozialen Geschichte der Juden in Mähren vom Antritt der Habsburger bis zur Schlacht am Weissen Berg (1526–1620) (Erlangen: Hogl, 1971). ———, ed. Individuum und Gemeinde Juden in Böhmen und Schlesien 1520 bis 1848 = Jedinec a obec. Židé v Čechách, na Moravě a ve Slezsku 1520–1848 (Prague: Židovské Muzeum v Praze, 2011). Urbanitsch, Peter. “Die politischen Judengemeinden in Mähren nach 1848.” In Moravští židé v rakousko-uherské monarchii (1780–1918)/Mährische Juden in der österreichisch-ungarischen Monarchie (1780–1918) (Brno: Státní okresní archiv Břeclav, 2003), 39–53. Veselská, Magda. Archa paměti: Cesta pražského židovského muzea pohnutým 20. stoletím (Prague: Židovské muzeum v Praze and Academia, 2012). ———. “Jewish and Related Museums in Czechoslova kia in the First Republic.” Judaica Bohemiae 40 (2004), 78–92. Vobecká, Jana. Demographic Avant- Garde: Jews in Bohemia between the Enlightenment and the Shoah (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2013). Wasserstein, Bernard. Vanishing Diaspora: The Jews in Europe since 1945 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997). Weinberg, Joanna. “A Humanist in the Kloyz: New Perspectives on the Maharal of Prague and Jacques Bongars.” Journal of the History of Ideas 77.4 (2016), 521–37. Wilke, Carsten. “Den Talmud und den Kant”: Rabbinerausbildung an der Schwelle zur Moderne (Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 2003). Wischnitzer, Mark. “Origins of the Jewish Artisan Class in Bohemia and Moravia, 1500–1648.” Jewish Social Studies 16.4 (1954), 335–50. Wlaschek, Rudolf M. Juden in Böhmen. Beiträge zur Geschichte des europäischen Judentums im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Munich: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1990; 2d ed., 1997). Wodziński, Marcin, and Janusz Spyra, eds. Jews in Silesia (Kraków: Księg. Akademicka, 2001). Zadoff, Mirjam. Next Year in Marienbad: The Lost Worlds of Jewish Spa Culture (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012). Zahra, Tara. “Imagined Noncommunities: National Indifference as a Category of Analysis.” Slavic Review 69.1 (2010), 93–119. ———. Kidnapped Souls: National Indifference and the Battle for Children in the Bohemian Lands, 1900–1948 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008).

C ontributor s

Kateřina Čapková is a senior researcher at the Institute of Contemporary History of the Czech Academy of Sciences. She teaches at Charles University and New York University in Prague. In 2016 she established the Prague Forum for Romani Histories (www.romanihistories .usd .cas .cz). Her book Czechs, Germans, Jews? National Identity and the Jews of Bohemia received an Outstanding Academic Title of 2012 award from Choice magazine. With Michal Frankl, she co-authored Unsichere Zuflucht (2012), a book about refugees from Nazi Germany and Austria who fled to Czechoslova kia. She is also coeditor (with Eliyana Adler) of Jewish and Romani Families in the Holocaust and Its Aftermath (2020) and (with Kamil Kijek) Jewish Lives under Communism (forthcoming). Michal Frankl is a senior researcher at the Masaryk Institute and Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences. He is the author of “Prag ist nunmehr antisemitisch” (2011), a history of Czech antisemitism at the end of the nineteenth century, and co-author (with Miloslav Szabó) of Budování státu bez antisemitismu? (2015), an analysis of the role of antisemitism in the transition from the Habsburg Empire to the Czechoslovak nation-state. He is also co-author (with Kateřina Čapková) of Unsichere Zuflucht (2012), a critical history of Czechoslovak refugee policy in the 1930s. He is the principal investigator of the European Research Council Consolidator project “Unlikely Refuge? Refugees and Citizens in East-Central Europe in the Twentieth Century.” Benjamin Frommer, associate professor of history at Northwestern University, is the author of National Cleansing: Retribution against Nazi Collaborators in Postwar Czechoslovakia (2005), which was also published in Czech translation (2010), and co-editor of Intermarriage from Central Europe to Central Asia: Mixed Families in the Age of Extremes (2020). He is currently completing a manuscript entitled “The Ghetto without Walls: The Jews of the Nazi Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.”

364

Contributors

Verena Kasper-Marienberg is an assistant professor in the History Department of North Carolina State University. Her research focuses on Jewish legal history, Jewish-Christian shared spaces, and Jewish daily life in the early modern Holy Roman Empire and Bohemia. Her book about Jewish litigation at the emperor’s court in Vienna won the Arnsberg Prize in Jewish Studies. Currently she is completing a microhistory study of the Frankfurt Jewish community in the eighteenth century. Hillel J. Kieval is the Gloria M. Goldstein Professor of Jewish History and Thought at Washington University in St. Louis. His research interests range from pathways of Jewish acculturation and integration to the impact of nationalism and ethnic conflict on modern Jewish identities; and from cross-cultural conflicts and misunderstandings to the discursive practices of modern antisemitism. Among his publications are The Making of Czech Jewry: National Conflict and Jewish Society in Bohemia, 1870–1918 (1988); Languages of Community: The Jewish Experience in the Czech Lands (2000); and Blood Inscriptions: Science, Modernity, and Ritual Murder in Europe’s Fin de Siècle (forthcoming). Helena Klímová is an archivist and the head of the reading room of the First Department of the National Archives in Prague. Ines Koeltzsch is an associate researcher at the Masaryk Institute and Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences. She specializes in the history of Jewish–nonJewish relations, urban history, and the history of migration in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Central Europe. Her book Geteilte Kulturen: Eine Geschichte der tschechisch-jüdisch-deutschen Beziehungen in Prag 1918–1938 (2012) was awarded with the Hedwig Hintze Förderpreis FU Berlin and the Georg  R. Schroubek Preis LMU Munich. She is the author of numerous articles and book chapters, including most recently “Utopia as Everyday Practice: Jewish Intellectuals and Cultural Translation in Prague before and after 1933” (in Catastrophe and Utopia, ed. Laczó and Puttkamer [2018]). Lenka Matušíková, an archivist from the National Archives (Prague), is the author of dozens of articles about Jewish history in the Bohemian Lands, some of which are published in her book K dějinám Židů v českých zemích (2015). Michael L. Miller is associate professor of Nationalism Studies at Central European University in Budapest and Vienna, and co-founder of the university’s Jewish studies program. His research focuses on the impact of nationality conflicts on the religious, cultural, and political development of Central European

Contributors

365

Jewry in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. His articles have appeared in Slavic Review, Austrian History Yearbook, Simon Dubnow Institute Yearbook, Múlt és Jövő, The Jewish Quarterly Review, and AJS Review. Miller’s book Rabbis and Revolution: The Jews of Moravia in the Age of Emancipation was published in 2011. It appeared in Czech translation as Moravští Židé v době emancipace (2015). He is currently working on a history of Hungarian Jewry titled Manovill: A Tale of Two Hungarys. Martina Niedhammer is a senior researcher at Collegium Carolinum, Research Institute for the History of the Bohemian Lands and Slovakia in Munich. She is a historian of Jewish and Eastern European History with a special focus on Jewish and non-Jewish spaces and the intersections between philology and nationalism. Her first book, “Nur eine Geld-Emancipation”? Loyalitäten und Lebenswelten des Prager jüdischen Großbürgertums 1800–1867 (2013), a group biography of five Prague Jewish upper-class families during the nineteenth century, was awarded the Max Weber Prize by the Bavarian Academy of Sciences. She is currently working on a history of “minor” European languages comparing Yiddish, Belarusian, and Occitan. Joshua Teplitsky is an associate professor in the Department of History and the Program in Judaic Studies at Stony Brook University. He specializes in the history of the Jews in Europe in the early modern period, with research on the history of the book, Jewish-Christian relations, and the history of disease and daily life. His book Prince of the Press: How One Collector Built History’s Most Enduring and Remarkable Jewish Library (2019) was named a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award and winner of the Salo Wittmayer Baron Book Prize of the American Academy for Jewish Research.

In d ex

Page numbers in italics indicate illustrations Abeles, Lazar, 47 Abeles, Simon, 47 Action Committee, 243 Adler, Gertrude (née Ackermann), 238, 239, 261 Adler, Moses, 238, 240, 261 Adler, Nathan, 79 Aid Committee for Jewish Refugees and Emigrants from Germany, 183 Aktion Gitter (Operation Bars), 205 Albatros (publisher), 272, 274 Alef (book series), 8 Aleichem, Sholem, 264 Alexander, Jacob, 29 aliyah (immigration to Israel), 183, 238 American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), 19, 154, 183, 240–42, 249, 251, 254, 255, 263, 272, 276, 351n57 Anschluss (annexation) of Austria, 157, 171, 192 antisemitism: in Bohemian Lands, 14–15, 18, 20, 127–29, 142–51, 156, 161–63, 194–95, 201–3, 247, 253–56, 268–70, 274; Catholic, 143; German, 143–44; Jewish responses to, 148–49, 162, 213, 219; in late nineteenth century, 125, 135; Nazi, 17, 195, 199–200, 202, 219–20; Polish, 268–70; political manifestations of, 144–45, 149, 151, 163; in Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, 208, 219–20, 247; refugee influxes linked to, 134, 172, 195, 201–2; Slovak, 240; Soviet, 254; Steinherz affair, 193. See also stereotypes of Jewishness Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung (newspaper), 169 Arijský boj (Aryan Struggle), 208 Aryan clauses, 144 Aryanization, 205, 247

Aryan Strug gle (tabloid), 247 Asch, Sholem, 264 Association for the Founding and Maintenance of a Jewish Museum in Prague, 191 Association for the Reformed Ser vice, 146 Association of Czech-Jewish Academics, 146 Association of Engineers, 204 Association of Jewish Students. See Bar Kochba Association Association of Realtors and Mortgage Brokers, 204 Auerbach, Auberl, 40 Auerbach, Israel, 40 Auerbach, Kele, 40 Auerbach, Salomon, 40 Auředníček, Zdenko, 145 Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, 120, 199, 221, 232–33 Auschwitz concentration camp, 19, 200, 232–33, 235, 259, 261 Austerlitz, Barukh, 39 Austria: expulsions of Jews from, 34–35; Jewish civic status in, 164; refugees from, 169–72, 184. See also Habsburg monarchy Austria-Hungary, 142–43 Ba’al Shem Tov, Israel, 79 Báar, Monika, 5 Babylonian Talmud, 47 Badeni, Kasimir, 145 Balfour Declaration, 161 Balzer, Johann Georg, Portrait of Rabbi David Oppenheim, 32 Bar Kochba Association, 14, 138, 150 Bassevi, Jacob, 35–36, 51 Battle of White Mountain (1620), 27, 66 Baxa, Karel, 145, 151 Beer, Fritz, 169, 177, 185

368

Index

Beer, Peter, 94, 97, 98, 101; Dat Israel (The religion of Israel), 94; Toledot Yisrael (The history of Israel), 94 Belzec (Bełżec) killing center, 19, 200, 231 Benda, Václav, 7 Benda, Vilém (né Bondy), 265 Bendiener, Ludwig, 146–47 Beneš, Edvard, 171, 244, 245, 252 Benet, Mordecai, 77, 80–81, 83–84 Beran, Rudolf, 18, 201, 204 Bergmann, Hugo, 138, 150, 165, 166, 168 Bermann, Richard A., 171 Betar, 185 Bezalel, Judah Loew b. (Maharal), 10, 38, 42–43 B-Jews, 219, 241 Blätter für die jüdische Frau (The Jewish woman’s mail), 184–85 Blau, Leopold, 203 Bloch-Bauer, Ferdinand, 218 blood libel. See ritual murder Blum, Ladislav Moše, 271 B’nai B’rith, 6, 7, 174–75, 182, 192 bocherim (tutors), 92, 96, 108–9, 328n10, 328n25 Bodenbach. See Děčín Boháč, Antonín, 174 Bohemia: expulsions of Jews from, 10, 27; Jewish population in, 71, 131, 172–75; legal and political structures in, 27–31, 115, 118, 131–32; refugees in, 34–35, 134, 154, 155 Bohemian Lands: antisemitism in, 14–15; borders of, 3–4; Czech- German tensions in, 14, 133, 141–42, 201; Czech Lands in relation to, 3–4; defining, 2–4; in Habsburg monarchy, 3; internal migration in, 240–42; Jewish cultural production in, 10; Jewish regional identity in, 10; legal and political structures in, 26–33, 115, 242–44; Moravia in relation to, 3; population of, 66, 240–42. See also Bohemia; Czechoslova kia; Jews of Bohemian Lands; Moravia; Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia; Silesia Bohemian Revolt (1618–1620), 42 Böhmisch Leipa (Česká Lípa), 35, 51, 55 Bondi family, 75 Bondovka, 146 Bondy, Bohumil, 146–47, 149 Bondy, Gottlieb, 5 Bondy, Ruth, 201, 213

Bongars, Jacques, 42 Bonn, Hanuš, 224 Boskovice (Boskowitz), 77, 79, 126, 174, 211, 274, 298–99 Brahe, Tycho, 43 Brandeis (Brandýs), 54, 55, 70, 93, 174 Brandeis, Friedl Dicker, 265 Brandeis family, 116 Bránský, Jaroslav, 274 Brecher, Gideon, 101 Breuer, Leopold, 85 Březnovský, Václav, 144, 149 Brihah (flight of refugees across Czechoslovakia), 251 British Committee for Refugees from Czecho-Slova kia, 202 Brit Shalom, 168 Brno (Brünn), 2, 6, 53, 57, 75, 77, 91, 124, 173, 176, 177, 180, 192, 203, 206, 208, 215, 221, 222, 242, 259, 276, 299 Brod, Elsa, 180 Brod, Max, 163, 180, 186 Brod, Samuel, 100 Brod, Toman, 219 Broda, Abraham, 39 Brünn. See Brno Buber, Martin, 150, 180 Buchenwald concentration camp, 205 Budweis. See České Budějovice Bulova, Josef A., 145 burial societies, 54 cabarets, 187–88 Carlsbad (Karlovy Vary, Karlsbad), 36, 126, 168, 264, 284–85 Carpathian Ruthenia and Carpathian Jews, 4, 235, 240–41, 244, 257, 261, 264, 271, 275. See also Transcarpathian Ukraine Carr, William, 203 Catholicism: antisemitism associated with, 143; censorship exercised by, 46; Frank’s conversion to, 75; in Habsburg monarchy, 27, 46–47, 65–66, 106; nobility associated with, 34 cemeteries, 53–54, 213, 214 censorship, 44, 46 Central Europe: map after 1648, 23; map circa 1750, 62; map circa 1800, 86; map circa 1900, 121; map of 1917–1938, 158; map of 1940, 197; map of 1949, 236 Central European Task Force of Transmigrants, 183

Index Central Office for Jewish Emigration (Zentralstelle für jüdische Auswanderung), 206–9, 211–12, 217, 219, 221, 223, 225, 247 Central Zionist Association of Czechoslova kia, 167 Černohorský, Karel, 148 Česká Lípa. See Böhmisch Leipa Česká státoprávní demokracie (Czech State Right Democracy), 163 České Budějovice (Budweis), 61, 91, 286 České zájmy (Czech interests) [magazine], 143 Českožidovské listy (newspaper), 147 Chajes, Gershon, 81 Chamberlain, Neville, 4 charity, 133–34 Charles I, Emperor of Austria, 161 Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor, 2 Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor, 49, 65, 67, 68, 71, 79 Charter 77 declaration, 273–74 Chelmno killing center, 221 Chevra Kadish (burial society), 128 children: cultural events for, 273; effects of antisemitism and persecution on, 213; emigration of, on Kindertransport, 202, 205; in post–World War II period, 257 Christians and Christianity: Jews in early modern (see also social contact with Jews restricted by); Jews in relation to, 42, 44, 49, 57, 59, 65, 80, 111–14, 139; and printing industry, 44, 46; social contact with Jews restricted by, 49, 67–68. See also Catholicism Cisleithania, 3, 123, 130, 134, 144–45, 152 citizenship, 115 Claims Conference (Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany), 250 Clementinum, Prague, 55–56 Clementinum University, Vienna, 46 clothing, distinguishing marks mandated for, 18, 219–20, 226 coat of arms, Old Town of Prague, 45 coffeehouses, 56 Cohen, Gary B., 134 Cold War, 252 Comité national Tchécoslovaque pour les réfugiés provenant d’Allemagne, 183 communism: in Czechoslova kia, 243, 249, 251, 253, 261–62, 270–71; and gender roles, 185; Jews and, 243, 249, 253–54; Nazi persecution of, 205 Communist Party, 167–69, 185, 205, 250, 253–54, 269

369

Compromise of 1867, 3, 142 Congress of Czechoslovak Writers, 269 Constitution: of 1849, 12, 116; of 1867, 3, 123–24, 142; of 1868, 3; of 1920, 163 conversion: attempts by Catholics at, of Jews, 47; of Frank to Catholicism, 75; to Judaism, 137, 275; as response to Nazi threat, 203; of Sabbetai Sevi to Islam, 48, 73 cookbooks, 136 Council of Four Lands (Poland), 30 Council of Jewish Communities in Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia (Rada židovských náboženských obcí v Čechách, na Moravě a ve Slezsku), 7, 240, 243, 250, 259, 272, 274, 275 Council of the Land (Moravia), 70 courtly ser vice, 35–37, 51 The Cremator (film), 267 Crucifix, Charles Bridge, Prague, 22, 26 Czech, Ludwig, 168 Czech Christian Social Party, 143 Czech-Jewish movement, 139, 147–50, 154, 165, 172, 178, 258 Czech-Jewish National League (Národní jednota českožidovská), 147 Czech-Jewish National Union, 133 Czech-Jewish Political Union (Politická jednota českožidovská), 149 Czech-Jewish Students Association (Spolek českých akademiků-židů), 138, 147 Czech Lands, 3–4 Czech language, 96, 107–8, 133, 141–42, 145, 147, 175, 178, 180–81, 246 Czechoslova kia: antisemitism in, 18, 20, 161–63, 194–95, 201–3, 247, 253–56, 268–70, 274; borders of, 4; communism in, 243, 249, 251, 253, 261–62, 270–71; culture in, 186–94, 265, 267–68, 273; Czech-German tensions in, 165; decline of religion in, 263, 271–72; defining, 4; de-Stalinization period in, 20, 256, 265, 267; emigration from, 176–77, 246–53, 263–64, 271; establishment of, 4, 161–63; expulsions/deportations of Jews from, 251; First Republic, 15–17, 157–95; Jewish nationality in, 164; Jewish political participation in, 167–69, 178–79; Jews in, 15–19, 157–95; laws and policies in postwar, 244–45; nationalism in, 161–62, 249, 255; Nazi annexation of part of, 4; Poland in relation to, 4; postwar retribution courts in, 247; refugees in, 165, 169–71, 176, 183–84, 201–2, 251; Second Republic, 18, 201–3;

370

Index

Czechoslova kia (continued) social organizations in, 185–86; social welfare in, 181–84, 250, 255; Soviet intervention in (1968), 5, 20, 269–70; Zionism and, 16, 19–20, 165, 167–68, 175, 178, 243, 252, 254–55, 259, 269–70. See also Slovakia Czechoslovak Social Ser vices, 168 Czechoslovak-Soviet treaty (1945), 240 Czechoslovak Telegraphic Agency, 268 Czechoslovak Union of Anti-fascist Fighters (Československý svaz protifašistických bojovníků), 262 Czechoslovak Zionist Organization, 243 Czech Refugee Trust Fund, 202 Czech Republic, 5, 275–78. See also Czechoslova kia Czech Technical University, 120 Dachau concentration camp, 205 da Costa, Uriel, 89 Daladier, Édouard, 4 Daleká cesta (Distant Journey) [film], 265 David ben Mendel. See Deutsch, David b. Menahem Mendel Davidovič, Chaja, 235 Davidovič, Emil, 235, 258, 260 Děčín (Tetschen), 134, 257, 261, 271, 287 Defenestration of Prague (1618), 27 Deutsch, David b. Menahem Mendel, 61, 323n1 Deutsch, Menahem Mendel, 61, 324n1 Deutscher, Isaac, 255 Deutsches Schulverein (German School Association), 144 Devětsil, 169 Di bashraybung fun Ashkenaz un Polak (poem), 58 dietary laws. See kosher food; ritual slaughter Dietrichstein, Prince, 48 Dobruschka, Schöndl, 75 Donath, Oskar, 165 Dormitzer family, 111, 116 Drexler, Paul, 208 Dubček, Alexander, 268–69 Dux, Luděk, 174 Dvorský, František, 149 Dvůr Králové (Königinhof) manuscript, 108 Dworský, Franz, 6 Eastern European Jews, 139–41, 154, 171, 183, 240, 263. See also Polish Jews

Edelstein, Jakob, 221, 229–30, 348n139 Edicts of Toleration (1781–1789), 11, 79–83 education: curricula in, 92–93, 95–101; enrollments in, 94–95; German-Jewish schools, 14, 80–81, 89, 92–95, 133, 160; Haskalah and, 80, 83, 91, 94, 97–99, 107; Hauptschule, Prague, 92–96, 98; in interwar period, 180–81; late nineteenth-century changes in, 133; mobility linked to, 38–39, 105–11; under Nazi rule, 213–15, 216; for nineteenth-century Jews, 91–96; Normalschule, Prague, 91, 92, 100, 109; in post–World War II period, 246; Prague as center of, 38, 43–44, 77, 109–10; of rabbis, 38–39, 77, 83, 96–102, 181, 263; of refugees from World War I, 179–80; state supervision of, 80, 91–98; synagogues as sites of, 52; teaching/tutoring, 91–92, 96, 102, 108–11, 328n10, 328n25; traditional vs. modern, 92–102; of women, 43–44, 102–5, 160; Zionism and, 180. See also universities and gymnasia; yeshivas Ehrlich, Helene, 170, 171 Ehrlich, Otto, 203 Eichmann, Adolf, 207 Elias, Ruth, 248 Emden, Jacob, 74–75, 77 emigration, 19, 176–77, 199, 202, 207, 210, 217, 246–53, 263–64, 271. See also mobility and migration Emigration Fund for Bohemia and Moravia (Auswanderungsfond für Böhmen und Mähren), 206–7, 212 Engel, Alfred, 154, 180, 192, 200, 225 Engländer, Elsa, 183 Eppstein, Paul, 230, 232, 233 Epstein family, 116 eruv (communal space for Sabbath observance), 55 Eskeles, Gabriel, 38, 48 ethnic identity/ethnicity, 103, 105, 130, 178 European Union, 3, 5, 20, 277 expulsions/deportations of Jews: from Austria, 34–35; from Bohemia, 10, 27; from Czechoslova kia, 251; from Habsburg Monarchy, 65–68; from Holy Roman Empire, 26–27; from Moravia, 10, 27; post–World War II, 244–46; from Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, 196, 199, 210–12, 220–27; from Silesia, 27. See also refugees Eybeschütz, Jonathan, 47, 49, 74–75, 77

Index Familiants Laws (1726), 10, 28, 61, 64, 65, 67, 71–73, 75, 81, 89, 90, 115, 248–53 Fantlová, Dagmar, 201 Färber, Rubin, 152 Farkaš, Bernard, 255, 258 Farkaš, Harry, 264 Feder, Richard, 180–81, 191, 210, 222, 258–60, 263, 273 Federation of Jewish Communities, 275, 278 Federation of Moravian Jewish Communities, 178 Ferdinand I, Archduke, 3 Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor, 27, 68, 99 Ferdinand II, Holy Roman Emperor, 27, 66 Ferdinand III, Holy Roman Emperor, 66–67, 125 Feuerbach, Ludwig, 109 Feuerlicht, Victor, 271, 273, 275 Fiedler, Jiří, 274 First Arab-Israel war (1947–49), 252 1st Czechoslovak Independent Army Corps, 240 Fischer, Otokar, 186 Fischl, Karel, 163 Fleckeles, Eleazar, 75, 77, 98, 101 Flesch, Josef, 83 forced labor, 217–18, 218 Foreign Affairs (journal), 244 Francis II, Holy Roman Emperor, 84, 102 Francis Joseph, Holy Roman Emperor, 145 Frank, Eva, 76 Frank, Jacob, 75, 79 Frankel, Zacharias, 102, 109 Frankists, 75, 79 Frankl, David Bernhard, 116, 331n86 Frankl, Ludwig August, 111, 116 Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria, 151 Franz Joseph I, Emperor of Austria, 16, 161, 165 Frauenberg (Hluboká nad Vltavou), 29, 51 Frederick V (“Winter King”), King of Bohemia, 27 Fried, Pavel, 238, 242, 256 Friedländer, Markus Hirsch, 5 Friedman, František, 227 Frischer, Arnošt (Ernst), 179, 243, 259 Fröschl, Jacob, 33 Frýd (Fried), Norbert, 211 Fuks, Ladislav, 267 Fürnberg, Louis, 255 Galicia, 3, 80, 140, 151, 152, 154, 187 Galský, Desider, 272–73, 275

371

Gans, David, 10, 42–43; Nehmad ve-na’im, 43; Tsemah David, 43 Gemeindebund der israelitischen Cultusgemeinden für Böhmen (Association of Jewish Communities in Bohemia), 131 General Regulations for the Administrative, Judicial and Commercial Affairs of the Jewry in the Margraviate of Moravia, 71 German Casino, 146–47 German Club, 146 German language, 80, 101, 113, 130, 141–42, 146, 175, 178, 246 Germany. See Nazi Germany Gestapo, 170, 171, 200–201, 205–6, 208, 211–12, 221, 222, 227, 247 ghettos: formation of, 11; impoverization of, 112, 130; literary descriptions of (ghettogeschichte), 138–40; Prague, 90–91, 111–12, 126–28; purposes of, 19, 230–32; Theresienstadt, 227–34 ghetto without walls, 17, 18, 199, 207–9 Gilgul bnei Husim (The Hussite cycle), 41 Ginz, Petr, 231 Glazar, Richard, 219 Goedsche, Hermann (pseudonym: Sir John Retcliffe), 127 Gold, Hugo, 6, 191, 193, 194, 314n14 Goldstein, Ernst, 170 Goldstücker, Eduard, 185, 255, 267 golem, 188 Goliath, Karel, 205, 344n40 Gomułka Aliyah, 269 Gott, Karel, 268, 351n75 Gradowski, Zalman, 233 gravestones of Jews, acquisition of, 213 Grazikowski, Friedrich, 247 Great Retribution Decree (1945), 247 Gruenfeld, Arnold, 205 Gruner, Wolf, 224 Grünfeld, Max, 138 Grynszpan, Herschel, 206 Guesnet, François, 68 Gutmann family, 126 gymnasia. See universities and gymnasia Haas, Hugo, 188 Habsburg monarchy: Bohemian Lands in, 3; Catholicism in, 27, 46–47, 65, 106; expulsions of Jews from, 65–68; Jews in Bohemian Lands during, 10–11, 61–119; policies on Jewish population in, 66–71 Hagibor, 186

372

Index

Hainewalde, 169 Hájková, Anna, 229 He-Haluts (The pioneer), 183 Ha-Me’assef (periodical), 82 Hamerschlag, Hanokh b. Israel, 40 Hanka, Václav, 108 Hanukkah celebration, 258 Hartmann, Moritz, 106–10; Kelch und Schwert (Chalice and sword), 110 Hashachar (The dawn), 183 Hasidism, 73, 79, 140–41, 241, 263 Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment), 80, 83–84, 91, 94, 97–99, 107, 130 Havel, Václav, 274, 277 Havelka, Antonín, 203 Hayon, Nehemiah, 48 Hayyun, Nehemiah, 74 Heartfield, John, 170 Hebrew language, 42–44, 46, 80, 81, 83–84, 93, 100–103, 105, 132, 147, 150, 178, 180, 185 Hegel, G. W. F., 109 Hegerová, Hana, 273 Heine, Heinrich, 277 Heitlinger, Alena, 262 Heitlinger, Ota, 262 Heller, Bohumil, 272 Heller, Isidor, 106, 110 Heller, Yom-Tov Lipmann, 38, 43, 46, 52, 59 Hellmann, Avraham-Adolf, 200 Helsinki Accords (1975), 272 Hempel, Amalie, 85 Heritage Action (Památková akce), 191 Hermanová, Ljuba, 268 Herškovič, Heřman, 257 Herškovič, Věra, 261 Herškovič family, 271 Herz, Elise, 329n46 Herz, Juraj, 267 Herzl, Theodor, 178 Heydrich, Reinhard, 17, 18, 199, 217, 220, 225, 228 HICEM (Aid Agency for Jewish Emigrants and Emigrants in Transit), 181–83, 205 High Holidays, 52, 54, 132, 177, 242, 257 High Synagogue, Prague, 53 Hilf, Alois, 178 Hilsner, Leopold, 14, 145, 149, 161 Hirsch, Fredy (Alfred), 233 Historia Judaica (journal), 6, 193 Hitler, Adolf, 4, 196 Hluboká nad Vltavou. See Frauenberg Hoffmann, Camill, 165

Hoffmann, Chaim (later Chaim Yahil), 181 Hoffmann, Malvina (Malke), 261–62 Holešov (Holleschau), 15, 27, 74, 162–63, 174, 217, 300–301 Holešovice, 210, 221–23 Holleschau. See Holešov Holocaust: commemorations of, 20; cultural life during, 231–32, 265; deaths in, 199, 200, 205, 230–31, 233, 238; films about, 265, 267; memorials to, 252, 253, 260–61, 264–65, 266, 270, 276–77; persecution of Jews leading up to, 203–20, 345n60; persons killed during, 120; in Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, 17–19, 196–234; regulations and deportations related to, 219–27; research on, 276–77; survivors of, 250, 257; Theresienstadt ghetto, 227–34; three phases of, 199 Holy Roman Empire, expulsions of Jews from, 26–27 Homberg, Herz, 80, 83, 97, 98; Bne Zion, 94, 98 Hönig family, 75 Horáček, Cyril, 143 Horowitz, Aaron Meshullam, 47–48 Horowitz, Beila, and Rachel Rausnitz, Ayn sheyn mayseh (A fine tale), 44 Horowitz, Isaiah, 43 Hřebejková, Jozefa, 220 Hroznětín (Lichtenstadt), 22, 36, 288 Hrůzová, Anežka, 145 Hungarian language, 246 Hungary: annexation of part of Slovakia by, 4; emigration of Jews to, 72–73. See also Austria-Hungary; Habsburg monarchy Hurtig, Alfred, 127–28 Hus, Jan, 41 Hušek, Jaromír, 143 Hussite Wars (1419–34), 41 Iberia, expulsions of Jews from, 47 identity: controversies over, 97, 134–36; ethnic, 103, 105, 130, 178; in interwar period, 184; in late twentieth century, 20–21; national, 14, 16; regional, 10, 58–60; secrecy surrounding, 262 Iggers, Wilma, 8, 157, 160, 177, 194 illegitimate births, 72 Illustrirter jüdischer Volkskalender (Illustrated Jewish popu lar almanac), 138 Imperial School Law (1869), 133 Imperial War Council (Habsburg monarchy), 82

Index intermarriage: and divorce, 227; early days of legally recognized, 134, 136–37; in Nazi era, 201, 218–19, 223–24, 226–27, 233–34, 241; in post–World War II period, 242, 245–46, 262; “privileged” vs. “unprivileged,” 226. See also Mischlinge Internationale Arbeiterhilfe, 168 International Red Cross, 232, 233 Isaac ben Moses of Vienna, 41 Isaac of Prostitz, 44 Islam, Sabbetai Sevi’s conversion to, 48, 73 Israel, 248–52, 254–55, 268–70, 274–75 Israel, Jonathan, 34 Israelitengesetz (law on external legal relationships of religious communities), 131, 179 Israelitische Allianz zu Wien (Israelite Alliance in Vienna), 154 Jacobson, Israel J., 241 Jahrbuch der Gesellschaft für Geschichte der Juden in der Čechoslovakischen Republik (journal), 6, 193, 314n12 Jakubovič, Leopold, 263 Jamnitz (Jemnice), 69 JDC. See American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee Jech, Jan O., 148 Jeitteles, Baruch (Benedikt), 83, 100 Jeitteles, Juda, 98 Jellinek, Adolf, 88, 89, 101, 106, 108–9 Jellinek, Hermann, 85, 89–90, 106, 108–9 Jellinek, Isak Löw, 89, 109 Jellinek, Moritz, 85, 89 Jerusalem (von Salemfels) family, 111 Jesenská, Milena, 186 Jesuits. See Society of Jesus Jewish Career Guidance Center (Židovská poradna pro volbu povolání), 183 Jewish Central Museum of Moravia and Silesia, 192, 200, 225 Jewish Central Office for Social Welfare in the Czechoslovak Republic (Židovská ústředna pro sociální péči v Československé republice), 182 Jewish Council of Elders, 226, 227, 229–30 Jewish Museum, Prague, 20, 128, 192, 225, 252, 264–65, 272, 276, 278 Jewish National Council (Czechoslova kia), 16, 163–64, 182 Jewish Party, 167, 180, 259

373

Jewish Religious Community of Bohemia and Moravia, 200, 215–17, 219, 224, 224 Jewish Religious Community of Prague, 196, 207, 212, 215–16, 221, 226, 228, 243 Jewish Theological Seminary, Breslau, 102 Jews of Bohemian Lands: from 1790–1860, 11–12, 85–119; from 1861–1917, 13–15, 120–56; from 1917–1938, 15–17, 157–95; changes in community function of, 129–37; Christians in relation to, 42, 44, 49, 57, 59, 65, 80, 111–14, 139 (see also social contact with Christians prohibited for); civic status of, 141–51, 163–67; communist persecution of, 253–56; comparison of Biblical events to context of, 41; correspondence of, 40; culture of, 11, 41–49, 186–94, 265, 267–68, 273; Czech loyalties of, 133, 144, 147, 160, 162–63, 165–67, 175, 180–81, 195; daily life of, 49–58; decline of religion among, 263, 271–72, 278–79; demographics of, 27, 29, 65–71, 81, 124, 172–76, 199, 200, 238, 240–42, 248, 257, 275, 278 (see also population maps of); in early modern times, 9–10, 22–60; economic roles of, 37–38, 57, 80, 130, 174, 217; in eighteenth century, 10–11, 61–84; emancipation of, 3, 8, 13–14, 79, 115–16, 123, 134, 142; emigration of, 19, 176–77, 199, 202, 205–7, 246–53, 263–64, 271 (see also mobility/ migration of); expulsions/deportations of, 10, 26–27, 65–68, 196, 199, 200, 202, 210–12, 220–27; German loyalties of, 14, 91, 113, 130, 141–42, 144, 146–47, 175, 244–46; Habsburg loyalties of, 15, 42, 114, 118, 151–56; Hungarian loyalties of, 176; identities and subjectivities of, 12–13, 20–21, 58–60, 91, 97, 118, 134–36, 167, 172–77, 187, 244–46, 262, 275–76, 278; interactions of, with non-Jews and fellow Jews, 33–41, 55–56, 90–91, 111–14, 125–29, 131, 139, 157, 160, 186–88; legal and political structures of, 26–33, 115, 242–44; mobility/migration of, 9–10, 13, 33–41, 105–14 (see also emigration of); nationality recognition for, 164, 175–76, 244–45; Nazi persecution of, 203–20; political participation of, 167–69, 178–79; population maps of, 24, 63, 87, 122, 159, 198, 237; post–World War II, 19–20, 235–48, 256–79; propaganda motives affecting treatment of, 144; regional identity of, 58–60; restrictions and bans on, 10–11, 18, 27–28, 49, 61, 71–73, 79–83, 90–91, 111–16, 203–20, 244–46, 271–74, 345n60 (see also social

374

Index

Jews of Bohemian Lands (continued) contact with Christians prohibited for); rituals of, 49–55, 82, 101; scholarship on, 5–9; self-governance of, 28–29, 52, 70, 118, 130; social contact with Christians prohibited for, 49, 67–68; state control over, 11, 64–71, 79–83, 90; traditions/heritage of, 127–28, 136, 139–40, 175, 177, 191–94, 249, 257–58, 258, 261–65, 267–69, 271–74, 277–78; transnational contexts for, 248–53, 265, 274–77; violence against, 15–16, 42, 116–18, 145, 157, 162–63, 200, 203, 206–8, 219–20; and World War I, 151–56; Zionism and, 259. See also antisemitism; refugees; stereotypes of Jewishness The Jews of Czechoslovakia (three-volume compendium), 7–8 Ježek, Jaroslav, 188 Joint Distribution Committee. See American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee Josel of Rosheim, 31 Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor, 11, 64, 65, 70, 79–84, 90, 91, 118, 133 Josephinian reforms, 79–83, 84, 89, 98 Jubilee Synagogue, Prague, 257, 271 Judaica Bohemiae (journal), 7, 265, 276 Judenpatent (1648), 27 Judensystemalpatent (1797), 98, 115 Die Juden und die Nationalen (The Jews and the nationalists) [booklet], 142 Jüdische Volksstimme (journal), 191 Die jüdischen Denkmäler in der Tschechoslowakei (Jewish heritage sites in Czechoslova kia), 191 Jüdisches Nachrichtenblatt/Židovské listy (The Jewish Bulletin) [newspaper], 216–17 Judson, Peter, 147 Judt, Tony, 277 Jungbunzlau. See Mladá Boleslav Jung Juda: Zeitschrift für unsere Jugend (Young Juda: A journal for our youth), 138, 165 Justitz, Alfréd, Modche and Rézi, 140 Kaaden (Kadaň), 125–26 kabbalah (Jewish mysticism), 43. See also Lurianic Kabbalah; mysticism Kadár, Ján, 267 Kaddish (mourning prayer), 136, 139 Kaempf, Saul Isaac, 102 Kafka, Emil, 196 Kafka, Franz, 17, 123, 127, 185, 186, 187, 265, 267

Kafka, Hermann, 123 Kaftan (cabaret), 187 Kahan, Gerd, 169–71 Kalendář českožidovský (Czech-Jewish almanac), 138, 147 Kapper, Joseph, 108, 186 Kapper, Siegfried, 106–11 Kara, Avigdor, 41–42; Et kol ha-tela’ah (All of the suffering), 42 Karlín (Karolinenthal), Prag, 177 Karlovy Vary. See Carlsbad Karlsbad. See Carlsbad Kárný, Miroslav, 19, 199, 230, 276 Katzenellenbogen, Pinhas, 52 Kauder, Adam, 29, 51 Kauders, Marie, Erstes israelitisches Kochbuch für böhmische Küche (The first Jewish cookbook of Bohemian cuisine), 136 Kaufmann, David, 66 Kaufmann, Viktor, 219 Kaufmannová, Heda, 202, 207, 219, 221, 224 Kavka, Arnošt, 268 kehillah (Jewish form of self-governance), 28–29, 70, 244 Kepler, Johannes, 43 Khmelnytsky Uprising (1648), 34, 66 Khrushchev, Nikita, 256 Kieval, Hillel J., 11–12, 58, 80; The Making of Czech Jewry, 9 Kindertransport (children’s transport), 202, 205 Kisch, Guido, 6–7, 193, 194 Klecanda, Jan, 143–44 Klíma, Ivan, 269 Klinger, Ruth, 157, 160, 163, 177, 187 Klos, Elmar, 267 Kohen, Gershom ben Solomon, 44 Kohn, Hans, 168 Kohn, Jindřich, 165 Kohn, Rudolf, 168 Kohnová, Věra, 214 Kohout, Pavel, 269 Kolín (Kolin), 29, 39, 75, 95, 133, 150, 173–74, 180–81, 225, 259, 289–90 Kompert, Leopold, 106, 109, 111, 138; Die Kinder des Randars (The leaseholder’s children), 107; Zwischen Ruinen (Among ruins), 137 Königliche Weinberge, Prague. See Královské Vinohrady Kopecký, Miloš, 221 Kopf, Salomon, 169 Kornfeld, Aaron, 100

Index kosher food, 55, 257–58, 272. See also ritual slaughter Královské Vinohrady (Königliche Weinberge), Prague, 13, 128, 131–32, 173, 177, 259 Kramář, Karel, 156, 162 Krämer, Salo, 224, 226, 227 Kraus, František R., 266, 268 Kraus, Isaiáš S., 148 Kreinerová, Věra, 210 Kriegel, František, 269 Kristallnacht, 200 Krochmal, Menahem Mendel, 43 Kuh, David, 110 Kurtzhandl, Löbl, 47 Lämel family, 112 Landau, Ezekiel, 11, 41, 61, 64–65, 77, 78, 79, 80, 82–84, 93, 99, 100; Noda’ bi-Yehuda, 77, 84 Landau, Israel, 83 Landau, Moses, 101 Landau, Samuel, 98, 99, 101–2 Landerer, Samuel, 261, 263 Landesjudenschaften (regional associations), 30, 37, 70 Landesmassafond, 131 Langer, František, 140 Langer, Jiří, 140–41; Devět bran: Chasidů tajemství (Nine gates: Mysteries of the Hasids), 141 Lauder Foundation, 276 League of Nations, 183 Lebenhart, Filipp, 138 Lederer, Eduard (Edvard), 154, 172 Lederer, Max, 138–40, 154 Lederer family, 112 Left Hegelianism, 89 Leib, Judah, 48 Leininger, Věra, 112, 113 Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor, 33, 66–67 Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor, 84 Leopold Johann of Austria, 59, 60 Letteris, Meir, 102 Levie, Abraham, 22, 25, 38, 49–51, 56, 58, 277 liberalism: Czech, 141, 142, 150; German, 118, 130, 142 Liberal Jewish Union, 276 Lichtenstadt. See Hroznětín Lichtenstadt, Abraham Aaron, 36–37 Lichtwitz, Hans (later Uri Naor), 189–90 Lieben, Salomon Hugo, 192–93

375

Lipník nad Bečvou (Leipnik), 77, 301–2 Literární noviny (Literature News), 269 Lodz, Poland, 220–21 Loew, Judah. See Bezalel, Judah Loew b. Loos, Adolf, 120 Löw, Rabbi, 188 Ludvíková, Alena, 219 Lueger, Karl, 145 Lurianic Kabbalah, 75, 79 Lustig, Arnošt, 267, 269 Lustig, Simon, 125 Lutwak, Alice, 235, 260, 260 Maccabäa group, 150 Maccabi, 186 Maccabi ha-Tsair, 186 Maharal. See Bezalel, Judah Loew b. Mährisch Ostrau. See Ostrava/Moravská Ostrava Maisel, Mordecai, 35, 51 Malakh, Hayim, 74 Mannheimer, Isak Noa, 85 Mannheimer, Max, 200 manorial administration, 37–38 Margulies, Emil, 167–68 Margulies-Kovály, Heda, 253 Maria Theresa, Holy Roman Empress, 11, 59, 64–65, 68, 70–71, 79 markets, 56–58 Markovič, Jakub, 264 Markovič family, 271 marriage: civil, 134, 137; Familiants Laws’ effect on, 71–72, 81; inter-, 134, 136–37; licenses for, 72, 94, 115; mobility linked to, 39; strategic considerations in, 39 Marx, Karl, 126 Masaryk, Tomáš G., 16, 126, 145–46, 149–50, 156, 161, 163–66, 166, 177, 194 maskilim. See Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment) Mauthausen concentration camp, 224 Mauthner, Israel, 112–13 Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor, 31 Maximilian II, Holy Roman Emperor, 27 Mayer, Daniel, 273, 275 May Laws (1868), 133, 134 Meissner, Alfréd, 168 memorial albums, 136, 178 memorial practices, 20, 54, 178. See also mourning Mendel (father of David ben Mendel). See Deutsch, Menahem Mendel, 63

376

Index

Mendelssohn, Moses, 80, 83, 99, 100, 101; Bi’ur, 100 merchants and trade, 36–38, 56–57, 68, 111–14, 116 messianism, 47–49. See also Sabbatianism Mikulov (Nikolsburg), 27, 38, 42, 48, 50, 73, 74, 77, 82, 83, 101, 126, 154, 174, 192, 200, 277, 302–3 mikvot (ritual baths), 55, 190, 241 military ser vice, 82–83, 151, 256 Mischlinge (children of mixed parentage), 18, 199, 226, 227, 233, 241, 245–46 Mishnah, 100 Mizrachi, 258 Mladá Boleslav (Jungbunzlau), 29, 54, 106, 191–92, 211, 225, 290–91 Mňačko, Ladislav, 269 mobility and migration: courtly ser vice and, 35–37; from Czechoslova kia, 176–77; in early modern period, 9–10, 33–41; education and religious study linked to, 38–39, 105–11; Familiants Laws’ effect on, 72; marriage as reason for, 39; in nineteenth century, 13, 105–14; post–World War II, 248–53; of refugees, 34–35; residential, in Prague, 111–13; trade as reason for, 37–38; of the underclass, 40–41; and urbanization, 124–25, 173–74; of women, 39. See also emigration; refugees modernity, 15, 123 Molkho, Solomon, 47–48 Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, 169 Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums (journal), 193 Moravia: Bohemia in relation to, 3; emigration from, 72–73; expulsions of Jews from, 10, 27, 66–67; Haskalah in, 83; Jewish cultural production in, 10; Jewish population in, 71, 81, 130, 172–75; Jews in early modern, 25; legal and political structures in, 27–31, 42–43, 115, 118, 130; printing industry in, 44; refugees in, 34, 66, 140, 152, 154, 163; and Sabbatianism, 74–75. See also Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia Moravian Regional Council, 30 Moryson, Fynes, 50 Moscow Protocol, 269–70 mourning, 136, 139, 178. See also memorial practices Munich Agreement (1938), 4, 17, 170, 172, 194, 196, 201–2, 269 Münz, Moses, 77

Murmelstein, Benjamin, 230 museums, 191–94 Mussolini, Benito, 4 mysticism, 79. See also Hasidism; kabbalah Náchod (Nachod), 29, 176, 291–92 names, personal and family, 81–82 Národní listy (National gazette), 141, 143, 144, 186 Národní obrana (National Defense), 144 Nathan of Gaza, 48 National Committee (Czechoslova kia), 163 nationalism: Bohemia as object of, 2; Czech, 4, 8, 107–8, 128–29, 133, 141–50, 156, 161–62, 249, 255; effect on Jews of, 14–15; German, 14, 141–42, 146, 150; Jewish, 14–15; Slovak, 254 National League of North Bohemia (Národní jednota severočeská), 148 National Party (Bohemia), 148 National Social Party (Česká strana národně sociální), 144 Nazi Germany: antisemitism of, 17, 195, 199–200, 202, 219–20; official definition of Jewishness by, 204, 206, 241; persecution of Jews by, 157, 169–70, 177, 194–95, 203–20; postwar retribution courts for deeds of, 247; pre–World War II annexations by, 4; refugees from, 169–72, 183–84. See also Holocaust; Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia Neruda, Jan, Pro strach židovský (For fear of the Jews), 143 Neuda, Abraham, 103 Neuda, Fanny, 102–3, 104, 105; JugendErzählungen aus dem jüdischen Familienleben (Tales of Jewish family life for youngsters), 135; Stunden der Andacht (Hours of devotion), 102–3, 135; “Word to the Noble Mothers and Wives in Israel,” 105 Neustadt, Adolf, 111 Neuwirthová, Vida, 273 Neu Zedlisch (Nové Sedliště), 125 Nikolsburg. See Mikulov Nisko Operation, 220, 221 nobility, 10, 34–37 Norwich Hebrew Congregation, 200 nostalgia, 139, 154, 160, 191 Novák, Rudolf, 247 Nuremberg Laws, 169, 171, 206, 213, 241 Œuvre de secours aux enfants (OSE), 240 Olamenu (publisher), 6

Index Olbracht, Ivan, 17, 190; Golet v údolí (Valley of exile), 190–91 Old-New Synagogue (Altneuschul), Prague, 127, 206, 257, 264 Old Synagogue (Altschul), Prague, 50, 101–2, 109 Olomouc (Olmütz), 66, 91, 117, 203, 205, 225, 276 Opava (Troppau), 2, 210, 303–4 Oppenheim, David, 31, 32, 38, 43, 46, 48–49, 52, 74, 77 Orel, 201 Oren, Mordecai, 255 Orenstein, Shimon, 255 Der Orient (newspaper), 101, 114 Orthodox Judaism, 92, 114, 131, 167, 172, 179, 181, 190, 235, 241, 257, 263, 275 Or Tomid, 146 Osoblaha (Hotzenplotz), 304–5 Ostjuden. See Eastern European Jews; Polish Jews Ostrava/Moravská Ostrava (Mährisch Ostrau), 126, 151, 165, 167, 173, 176, 179, 180, 187, 193, 194, 200, 203, 205, 206, 210, 214–15, 220, 224, 225, 276, 305–6 Osvobozené divadlo (Liberated Theater), 188, 268 Ottokar II, King of Bohemia, 26 Palacký, František, 5 Pařík, Arno, 274 Pascheles, Wolf, 102–3, 138 Pavlát, Leo, 272, 274 peasants, 37 Pěkný, Tomáš, 273; Historie Židů v Čechách a na Moravě (History of Jews in Bohemia and Moravia), 8 Perlhefter, Bella, 43–44 Petschek villa, Prague, 210 Philo of Alexandria, 101 Piarist gymnasia, 106–7 Pietism, 79 Pilsen (Plzeň), 44, 91, 120, 124, 162, 203, 205, 225, 276, 292–93 Pinkas Synagogue, Prague, 20, 52, 264, 266, 270 Pirna-Sonnestein killing center, 205 Píša, Václav, 247 Poale Zion (Workers of Zion), 151, 163, 167, 168 Ha-Poel ha-Tsair, 167 Poláček, Karel, 17, 188; Muži v offsidu (Men offside), 188–89

377

Poland: antisemitism in, 268–70; Czechoslovakia in relation to, 4; as destination for Jews, 205–6, 220–21; German invasion of, 205, 211; Jews in, 187, 242 Poland-Lithuania: Hasidism in, 73; refugees from, 34, 66, 139–40 Polish Jews, 139–40, 154, 240, 250–51. See also Eastern European Jews Pollak, Ernst, 186 Pollak, Joachim, 100 Polná (Polna), 100, 145, 293–94 Popper, Josef, 182 popu lar culture, 137–41 Porges (von Portheim) family, 75, 111, 116 Pošusta, Zdeněk, 222 Prager Tagblatt (newspaper), 187 Prague (Praha, Prag): antisemitic violence in, 206; brief history and demography of Jews in, 294–95; coat of arms, Old Town of Prague, 45; deportations from, 222–23, 225; as educational center, 38, 43–44, 77, 109–10, 180; emigration from, 207, 210; Gubernium, 95, 112–13; Haskalah in, 83; Hauptschule, 92–96, 98; Jewish history in, 193; Jewish Town (Judenstadt), 13, 22, 25, 27, 29, 35, 49, 50, 55, 59, 67, 89, 90, 111–12, 118; Jewish Town Hall, 13, 35, 53, 98, 127, 173, 206, 268; Jews in early modern, 22, 25, 27, 39–42, 48, 50–51, 58; Jews in nineteenth-century, 13, 101–2, 118, 126–28; Jews in twentiethcentury, 16, 173, 209–11, 214–15, 242; Jews in twenty-first century, 275; Josefstadt (Josefov), 118, 126–27, 173, 177, 196, 210; legal and political structures in, 27–29, 33, 118; Normalschule, 91, 92, 100, 109; Old Jewish Cemetery, 1, 13, 54, 127–28, 192, 214; policies on Jewish population in, 67, 68, 70; political and cultural role of, 31, 33, 38, 43–44, 77, 83–84, 126, 146, 193, 242; population of, 66, 67; refugees in, 176; restrictions and bans on Jews in, 209; ritual baths in, 55; scholarly emphasis on, 1; synagogues in, 50–53, 55, 127–28, 177; Tandelmarkt (flea market), 57–58, 116, 117; urban reconstruction of, in nineteenth century, 13, 127–28, 129 Prague Jewish Community, 196, 208, 212, 221, 243, 263, 267 Prague Jubilee Exhibition, 144 Prague Spring, 5, 20, 268 Pressburger Zeitung (newspaper), 111 Princip, Gavrilo, 227

378

Index

printing, 44, 46 Přítomnost (journal), 172 procession of Prague Jewish community for birth of Joseph, heir to imperial throne, 64 Procházka, Jan, 269 professions, purging of Jews from, 201–4 propaganda: anti-Jewish, 19–20, 144, 161–63, 247, 252, 269, 270; exploitation of Jews for, 152, 250, 252, 265, 269, 272, 313n5; Soviet, 253–54 property, restrictions on and expropriations of, 12, 17, 115–16, 204, 206–7, 210–12, 247–48 Prostějov (Prossnitz), 66, 73–75, 83, 89, 101, 108, 126, 306–7 Prostitz, Yehuda Leib, 74 Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia: antisemitism in, 208, 219–20, 247; emigration from, 205–7, 217; establishment of, 18, 203; expulsions/deportations of Jews from, 196, 199, 210–12, 220–27; Holocaust in, 17–19, 196–234; labor and forced labor in, 217–18, 218; persecution of the Jews in, 203–20; social welfare in, 214–17 Przibram family, 112 Raaz, Anton, 94 rabbis: activities and influence of, 43; in Bohemia, 31; in Czechoslova kia of 1950s and 1960s, 258–60; education and careers of, 38–39, 77, 83, 96–102, 181, 263; in eighteenth century, 77, 79; Habsburg regulation of, 70; heritage projects undertaken by, 191; in Moravia, 30; in nineteenth century, 96–102; in Prague, 31; supervision of conversion process by, 137 Radok, Alfréd, 265 Radvanský, Artur (né Thüeberger), 262–63, 273 Rahm, Karl, 247 Rajk, László, 254 Rakous, Vojtěch (born Adalbert Österreicher), 138–40, 154; “Modche and Rezi,” 273 Rapoport, Solomon Judah, 99, 109 Rashi. See Solomon ben Isaac Rašín, Alois, 162 Rausnitz, Rachel, and Beila Horowitz, Ayn sheyn mayseh (A fine tale), 44 Realist Party (Czech), 149, 163 Reform Judaism, 257 refugees: antisemitism linked to influxes of, 134, 172, 195, 201–2; from Austria, 169–72, 184; in Bohemia, 34–35, 134, 140, 154, 155; in Czechoslova kia, 165, 169–72, 176, 183–84,

201–2, 251; education of, 179–80; gendered experiences of, 170; literature about, 139; in Moravia, 34, 66, 140, 152, 154, 163; from Nazi-controlled areas, 183–84, 194, 199–201; from Poland-Lithuania, 34, 66, 139–40; policies and treatment of, 152, 154, 165, 170–72; from Romania, 171, 172; in rural areas, 35; from Russia, 134; from World War I, 152, 154–55, 155, 163, 165, 179–80; Zionism and, 154–55. See also expulsions/ deportations of the Jews regional associations, 29–31, 42–43 Regulation on Jewish Property, 206–7 religion: nineteenth-century community role of, 129–30, 135; skepticism and criticism concerning, 85, 89–90, 108, 109, 177; traditions connected to, 136, 139, 177–78. See also rituals Repräsentanz der Landesjudenschaft, 131 residential segregation, 11, 67–68, 69, 90–91, 111–14 Respekt (journal), 8 Retcliffe, John. See Goedsche, Hermann Reubeni, David, 47 Revitalization of Jewish Historical Buildings in the Czech Republic, 277 Revolutions of 1848, 12, 90, 109, 115–18, 123, 130 Rieger, František Ladislav, 141 Rieger, Joseph Anton von, 97 Ringlin (Ringle), Johann Georg, view of the Prague Tandelmarkt, 117 Ringwald, Edith, Familie Herbelin (The Heberlin family), 184 ritual murder (blood libel), 14, 145, 149, 161 rituals, 49–55, 82, 101, 178 ritual slaughter (shehitah), 55, 100, 136, 181, 241. See also kosher food Ročenka Společnosti pro dějiny Židů v Československé republice (journal), 6 Rofe, Jacob ben Mendel, 57 Roma, 135, 277 Roš Chodeš (journal), 8 Rosenbacher, Adolf (Aron), 109 Rosenbaum, Diane, 272 Roth, Mikuláš/Miki, 275 Rothschild family, 126 Rozinky a mandle (Raisins and Almonds) [Yiddish short stories], 264 Rozvoj (Progress) [newspaper], 149 Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor, 10, 33, 35, 42, 188

Index Rüffer, Eduard, 127 rural areas: in Bohemia, 25, 27–29, 33–35; decline of, 6, 124–25, 167–68, 241; deportations from, 223; expulsions of Jews from, 211; High Holidays in, 52; Jews’ experience of living in, 49–50, 209–10; prayer spaces in, 51; refugees in, 35; restrictions and bans on Jews in, 209–10 Russia: Jewish antipathy toward, 152; refugees from, 134 Sabbatianism, 11, 43, 48–49, 73–75, 77, 79 Sabbetai Sevi, 48, 73–75 Sachs, Michael, 102, 109 Sakaschansky, Maxim, 160, 187 Šalda, F. X., 170 Šalda Committee, 170 Šalomon, Tomáš, 263 Sartre, Jean-Paul, Réflexions sur la question juive, 268 Saudek, Emil, 165 Saxe-Lauenburg, Julius Franz, duke of, 36 Scharf, Jakub, 148–49 Schick family, 116 Schmolka, Marie (Schmolková, née Eisner), 181–84, 182, 205, 344n36 Schneider, Alois, 125 Schneider, Ernst, 144 Scholem, Gershom, 73–74 Schönerer, Georg von, 143 Schöpfkes, Joseph, 112 Schudt, Johann Jacob, Das Frankfurter und Prager Freuden-Fest, 59 Schwab, Löw, 101 Schwarzenberg, Johann Adolph von, 29, 34–35 Segerová, Věra, 219 segregation. See residential segregation Selbstwehr (newspaper), 150, 155, 184 Separation Laws (1727), 11, 67–68 Shai Takkanot (311 Statutes), 30, 70 Ayn shayne naye lid fun Mashiah (A Lovely new song about the Messiah), 48 shehitah. See ritual slaughter Shoah. See Holocaust shohet. See ritual slaughter Ha-Shomer ha-Tsair (The Young Guard), 185 The Shop on Main Street (film), 267 Sicher, Gustav, 181, 256, 258–60, 260 Sidon, Karol, 270, 275 Sierakowiak, Dawid, 221 Silber, Michael K., 79, 83

379

Silesia: expulsions of Jews from, 27; Jewish population in, 172–75; legal and political structures in, 115; Moravia’s subsumption of, 339n46 Silesian Wars, 3 Silverman, Lisa, 161 Singer, Ludvík, 150, 163 Šír (Schier), František, Portrait of Chief Rabbi Ezekiel Landau, 78 Six-Day War (1967), 268, 269 Slánský, Rudolf, and his trial, 20, 253–55 slaughter. See ritual slaughter Slovakia: antisemitism in, 240; borders of, 4; communism in, 254; culture of, 187; education in, 180; emigration from, 240; establishment of contemporary, 5; Hungarian annexation of part of, 4; Jews in, 172, 174–75, 179, 257, 261, 271; nationalism in, 254; natural beauty of, 189; as part of Czechoslova kia, 16; social welfare in, 183; Zionism in, 243. See also Czechoslova kia Sobibor killing center, 231 Social Democratic Party of Germany, 170 Social Democrats (Bohemia), 144, 149 Social Democrats (Czech), 151, 167, 168, 205 Social Institute of the Jewish Communities of Greater Prague (Sociální ústav náboženských obcí židovských Velké Prahy), 183 social mobility. See mobility and migration social welfare, 181–84, 214–17, 250, 255 Société de Secours et d’Entraide, 250 Society for the History of Czechoslovak Jews, 6, 7, 193, 194, 248–49 Society of Jesus (Jesuits), 46 Sofer, Moses (Hatam Sofer), 79, 84 Sokol, 191, 201 Solomon ben Isaac (Rashi), 100 Sonntagsblätter (newspaper), 111 Soviet Union, 240, 252–55, 269–70 Spanish Synagogue, Prague, 146 Spiegel, Käthe, 193 Spinoza, Baruch, 89 Špírková, Jarmila, 223 Spitz, Isaac, 106, 108 SS (Schutzstaffel), 17, 199, 206, 208, 219, 222, 223, 229, 232, 233, 247 Stadthagen, Hendele, 39 Star of David, 18, 132, 203, 219–20, 226 State Jewish Museum. See Jewish Museum, Prague State Office for Church Affairs (Státní úřad pro věci církevní), 244

380

Index

State Rights Party (Státoprávní pokroková strana), 144 Stein, Adolf, 5 Steiner (Steinerová), Hanna, 181, 183–84, 205, 344n36 Steinherz, Samuel, 6, 192–93 Steinmann, Willi, 247 Steinschneider, Jacob, 101 stereotypes of Jewishness, 58, 139, 152, 155, 168, 187, 188 Stern, Evžen, 168 Stiassny, Wilhelm, 132 Štipl, Richard, idealized portrait of Fanny Neuda, 104 Strauss, Dov, 203 Sturmabteilung (SA), 169 Subcarpathian Rus: culture of, 17, 187, 189–91; demographics of, 16; education in, 180–81; Jews in, 172, 174, 176, 179, 181, 183, 189–90 Subcarpathian Ruthenia, 4, 5. See also Carpathian Ruthenia; Transcarpathian Ukraine Sudeten German Party, 200 Sudetenland, 4, 17, 199–203, 221, 240 suicides, 203, 204, 228 Supreme Council of the Jewish Religious Communities in Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia, 179, 191 Svoboda, Ludvík, 240 Svoboda, Václav, 107–8 synagogues: abandonment/demise of, 125, 127–28, 177, 191, 253; acquisition of, 212–13; antisemitic destruction of, 200, 203, 206, 210; architecture and decoration of, 50–51, 132–33; gender arrangement in, 50–51, 132, 257; informal, 51; modern, 132–33; multiple functions of, 50, 52–53, 55, 131–32; Nazis’ closing of, 219; in Prague, 50–53, 101–2, 127–28, 177; ritual in, 50, 101, 132–33; in rural areas, 125 Tábor (Tabor), 61, 296 takkanot, 2, 28, 30, 70, Talmud, 46, 47, 75, 96–98, 100, 109 Talmud Torah, 92, 95 Taussig, Jaroslav, 210, 345n66 Taussig, Samuel, 49 teachers, 92, 96, 328n10. See also bocherim Tekhelet Lavan (Blue White), 169, 185 Teller, Markus, Die Juden in Böhmen und ihre Stellung in der Gegenwart (The Jews of

Bohemia and their standing at pre sent), 142 Teltscher, Richard, 192, 200 Teplice (Teplitz), 81, 168, 257, 261, 297–98 Terezín. See Theresienstadt Terezín Initiative, 276 Terezín Initiative Institute, 276 Terezín Memorial, 276 Terezínské studie a dokumenty/Theresienstädter Studien und Dokumente (journal), 277 Tetschen. See Děčín Teyn (Týn) Church, Prague, 55 Teytz, Viktor, 139 Theilhaber, Felix, 174 Theresienstadt (Terezín), 18, 19, 120, 199, 200, 210, 218, 220–22, 225–34, 229, 238, 247, 259–61, 265, 276–77 Theresienstadt Family Camp, 232–33, 238 Thieberger, Friedrich, 175 Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648), 27, 34, 39, 53, 65–66 Tiktiner (or Tikotin), Rebecca b. Meir: Menekes Rivkah (The nursemaid of Rebecca), 44; Simkhes Toyre lid (Song for Simhat Torah, 44 Tokstein, Antonín, Židé v Čechách (The Jews of Bohemia), 142 tombstones, 53–54 Tomek, Václav Vladivoj, 128 Torah scrolls, 265 Tosafists, 100 trade. See merchants and trade Transcarpathian Ukraine, 5, 246 Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, 163 Třebíč (Trebitsch), 28, 58, 77, 100, 206, 225, 238, 307 Trebitsch, Abraham, 82 Trebitsch, Nehemias, 101 Treblinka, 19, 200 Treuhandstelle, 224 Troppau. See Opava Tsoref, Heshel, 74 tutors, 91, 92, 96, 102, 108–11, 215, 217, 328n25. See also bocherim tzedakah (charity), 133–34 Uherský Brod (Ungarisch Brod), 74, 89, 106, 117, 201, 211, 225–26, 231, 232, 344n41 Ukraine, 5 Ungarisch Brod. See Uherský Brod United Nations Partition Plan, 251–52

Index United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), 245–46, 251 United States, 248–50, 254 universities and gymnasia, 97–99, 106–11 University of Leipzig, 109 UNRRA. See United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration urbanization, 124–25, 173–74, 241 va’ad ha-medinah, 30, 43 Verein zur Verbesserung des israelitischen religiösen Kultus (Association for the Improvement of Jewish Religious Worship), 101–2 Věstník (magazine), 264 Vidláková, Michaela, 273 Vienna: expulsions of Jews from, 34, 66; revolutionary movement in, 85, 109 Viennese Allianz, 146 Vinohrady. See Královské Vinohrady Vlach, Karel, 268 Vlajka (Banner), 203, 208 Vobecká, Jana, 71 Vohryzek, Viktor, 149 Volavková, Hana, 20, 264–65 Voskovec, Jiří, 188, 268 Wagenseil, Johann Christoph, 43 Wagner, Richard, Judentum in der Musik, 143 Waldstein, Vally, 183 Wallenstein, Albrecht von, 36 Wanefried, Moses Katz, 101 Wanniczek, Johann, 92, 94, 96, 109, 328n10, 328n25 War of the Austrian Succession (1740–1748), 68 Warsaw Pact, 5, 20, 270 Weber, Ilse (née Herlinger), 165–66, 175, 194 Wechsberg, Joseph, 151–52, 153 Wechsberg, Siegfried, 151–52, 153 Wechsberg family, 126 Wedeles, Bernard, 120 Wedeles, Josef, 123 Wedeles, Roza, 123 Wedeles, Šimon, 120 Wehle, Kurt, 7, 243, 248 Wehle family, 75 Wehrmacht, 171, 210, 211 Weil, Jiří, 168–69; Moskva-hranice (Moscow to the border), 169 Weiskopf, F. C., 255 Weiss, Isaac Hirsch, 100–101

381

Weizmann, Chaim, 167–68 Wels, Rudolf, 120, 123, 126 Weltsch, Felix, 165, 168 Weltsch, Robert, 168 Wenceslaus IV, King of Bohemia, 41 Werfel, Franz, 186 Werich, Jan, 188, 268 Wertheimer, Wolf, 70 Wessely, Wolfgang, 94 Westminster Synagogue, England, 265 Wiener, Moses, 94 Wilke, Carsten, 99 Willmann, Alfred, 200 Wilson, Woodrow, 161 Winter, Lev, 168 Wise, Isaac Mayer, 100 WIZO. See Women’s International Zionist Organization Wlaschek, Rudolf M., Juden in Böhmen, 8 women: education of, 43–44, 102–5, 160; effect of Familiants Laws on, 72; family and community role of, 13, 103, 135, 184–85; mobility of, 39; regulations on conduct of, 56; rituals concerning, 54–55; in social welfare organizations, 181–84; status of, after World War I, 184–85; in synagogues, 50–51, 132; unmarried, 72 Women’s International Zionist Organization (WIZO), 181, 183, 184 World Jewish Congress, 250 World War I, 151, 161 World Zionist Organization, 167, 250 Yampels, Hirsch ben Selig, 57 Yehuda Hasid, 74 Yekele the Hazzan, 25 yeshivas, 73, 77, 83–84, 97–101. See also education Yiddish language, 44, 50, 80, 81, 83, 150, 176, 190, 246, 264 Young Czech Party, 144, 148–49 Zdekauer family, 112 Zeitschrift für die Geschichte der Juden in der Tschechoslowakei (journal), 6, 193 Zeitschrift für die Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland (journal), 193 Zelená hora (Grünberg) manuscript, 108 Zentralstelle für jüdische WanderarmenFürsorge (Central Welfare Office for Jewish Vagrants), 134 Zerkowitz family, 75

382

Index

Židovská ročenka (Jewish Annual), 273 Zimmermann, Johannes, 107 Zionism: cultural, 14–15; Czechoslova kia and, 16, 19–20, 165, 167–68, 175, 178, 243, 252, 254–55, 259, 269–70; and education, 180; and gender roles, 185–86; origins of, in Bohemia,

150; Orthodox antipathy toward, 167; popu lar journals promoting, 138; social welfare activities of, 183; and WWI refugees, 154–55 Zucker, Alois, 148 Zunz, Leopold, 102